Orbital’s music was once the poster child for glitchy, drug-fuelled acid house culture, with tracks like ‘Belfast’ and ‘Chime’ infiltrating the mainstream and terrifying parents with their sense-assaulting sound. Pearl clutching wasn’t on the cards at tonight’s gig, but brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll have maintained their subversive streak over the past 30 years. Amidst the repetitive beats and transcendent dance odysseys, their Sleaford Mods collaboration ‘Dirty Rat’ landed like a hand grenade, its ferocious anti-Tory snarl ‘you voted for them, you dirty rat’ echoing through the room with a cathartic fury. It dovetails into the threatening shimmer of ‘Satan’ as footage of Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Donald Trump and others are depicted in hellish flames which epileptically flash behind the duo, before text appears onscreen in a brusque dismissal of every politician: ‘all of them’. 

^{Picture: Stewart Fullerton}

Ferocious stuff, but the meat of the night lies in the sheer joy of dance music, an open-hearted, limb-flailing elation that emanates from the stage. ‘Spicy’, a perhaps unlikely remix of Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’, acts as a reminder that, behind all the complicated Novation knob twiddling, the Hartnoll lads were one of the driving forces behind dance music's invasion of the pop charts (anyone who remembers their beautifully disdainful performance on Top Of The Pops can attest to that). 

^{Picture: Stewart Fullerton}

The agile visuals and sounds of Orbital (which have aged remarkably well compared to their peers) are pure synaesthesia, channelling the flow state of the body and mind, the juddering rhythms and sensory overload of strobing lights enveloping the senses. Deep cuts merge with grade-A classics, while tracks from their latest album Optical Delusion appear in exhilaratingly distended, chopped up form, holding surprises for even the most dedicated fan. At an almost unbroken two hours, you don’t enter an Orbital gig lightly. But those who do will find a duo embracing the past while looking to the future, crafting an energising racket that never dulls. 

Orbital are on tour until Saturday 8 April; reviewed at SWG3, Glasgow.