I was sad to read today about the passing of William Orbit.

I first came across Orbit’s name on remixes for Erasure and Depeche Mode, and then found his name popping up all across my record collection. Orbit’s Guerilla Studios was used extensively by Mute, and its engineer, Rico Conning, would later defect to Mute’s own studio at 429 Harrow Road.

I interviewed Orbit in 2019 for Clash about his beautiful collaborative album, The Painter, which featured contributions from Mute’s Polly Scattergood.

Orbit only had the sweetest things to say about Scattergood. He singled out her work with Simon Fisher Turner as some of his favourite music of hers that he’d heard.

After the interview Orbit and I exchanged Instagram messages about Scattergood’s cover of ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’, which I had as an mp3 and which I had intended to send him but never did.

He was a wonderful person to talk to – lively, honest, open and extremely generous with his time. I could have spoken to him for hours, and we made tentative plans to talk again but never did.

My interview for Clash can be found below.

https://www.clashmusic.com/features/in-conversation-william-orbit/

Rest in peace William.

Words: Mat Smith

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