William Orbit

William Orbit is a British musician and record producer, best known to the public for producing Madonna's album "Ray of Light", which received four Grammy Awards.
His speciality is atmospheric keyboard electronica although much of his work features accomplished guitar playing.
Like its predecessor, "Pieces in a Modern Style 2" is a collection of classical music "covers": from Puccini to Elgar, Bach to Tchaikovsky. Special Bonus CD: 6 bonus tracks from William Orbit plus 8 remixes by Ferry Corsten, John Digweed & Nick Muir, Jakwob, Timo Maas & Santos, Alex Metric, Rockdaworld.

Strange Cargo III is the fourth album by electronic instrumentalist William Orbit. The album matches elegant sequencer trance and understated organic instruments (piano, guitar) with ethnic-fusion and soft house rhythms. It's the only Strange Cargo record featuring vocals, with Beth Orton making an early appearance (more earth mother than neo-folky) on the beautiful ambient-trance single "Water From a Vine Leaf." "Into the Paradise" and "The Story of Light" are variations on the same form, while Orbit borrows from hip-hop and dub for "Time to Get Wize," with the toasting of Divine Bashim. While still tied to the '80s Fourth World aesthetic of its predecessors, on Strange Cargo III Orbit begins moving toward a more completely electronic form of music in keeping with the productions of his Guerilla label.

After years of making his own esoteric ambient albums and paying for them by doing dance remixes for pop acts, William Orbit hit the big time in 1998 by co-writing and producing Madonna's Ray of Light album. With his own debut solo album on Madonna's label, he returned to his esoteric pursuits, programming a variety of calm classical pieces into his computer and rearranging them to one extent or another. Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" came off relatively unscathed, but by the time he got to "Ogives Number 1" by Erik Satie, Orbit was mixing in the sounds of a helicopter, as if he were Francis Ford Coppola doing sound design work on Apocalypse Now with the Doors' "The End." Handel's "Largo from Xerxes" remained recognizable, but Beethoven's "Triple Concerto" was largely transformed…

Belief is the second album of the British EBM group Nitzer Ebb. It was the first album recorded with drummer Julian Beeston (who took over from David Gooday), and Flood took over as producer from Phil Harding. It was released by Mute Records on 9 January 1989. The fifth song on the album, "T.W.A.", appears to have been inspired by the Hezbollah hijacking of TWA flight 847 in 1985. In a 1989 retrospective for Rolling Stone, Jim Farber wrote that the music video for "Control, I'm Here" had "the most harshly industrial visuals of the year".

ZTT Records picked from its enormously influential '80s catalog for this 11-track compilation of long-out-of-print remixes and such. Among the goodies are rarities by 808 State ("Pacific 707" plus a remix of "The Only Rhyme That Bites"), Frankie Goes to Hollywood (mixes of "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" and "Two Tribes") and Seal (mixes by William Orbit of "Killer" and "Crazy"). It's a great collection for '80s enthusiasts as well as novices wishing to explore the decade's influence on '90s dance.