It was a balmy Sunday night on the August Bank Holiday weekend in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork at Féile 95 and Orbital were about to play one of their very first festivals.

The Stone Roses, at that stage a limping dog of a band, had just exited the main stage and brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll from Sevenoaks in Kent were about to dazzle the Irish audience with their pristine punk-inspired techno.

Nearly thirty years after that transcendent night by the Lee, the Hartnoll brothers are on the Zoom machine to me from their studio in Brighton.

"Féile was one of our very first festivals," says Paul (54), perhaps the more serious of the techno siblings. "It was astonishing. It was huge. We came on after The Stone Roses, they overran so we said, `right, we’re gonna make up for lost time.’

"We’re not gonna let them steal our time so we basically started playing Belfast from behind the curtain and got rolled on, which was immense fun."

"Then we did two nights in the Olympia in Dublin, which was fantastic," says the handle-barred moustached Phil (59).

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"We had a catastrophic breakdown of our sequencer on one of the nights and all the notes failed on our keyboards and everyone just roared and put their hands in the air as if it was something we intended to do.

"Then when we explained what had happened, they gave us as much laughter as we deserved, and it didn’t break the atmosphere at all."

Since that early appearance in Cork, Orbital, named after Greater London's orbital motorway, the M25, have become one of the biggest electronic acts in the world.

Along with big beat monsters like The Chemical Brothers and the more erudite sound of Leftfield and The Orb, Phil and Paul helped drag electronic dance music kicking and raving into the mainstream.

Along the way, they’ve sampled everything and everyone from Stephen Hawking to Star Trek: The Next Generation to Bon Jovi and Belinda Carlisle and released a series of albums that defined nineties club culture.

Ireland is still writ large in the Orbital story. This St Patrick’s night they play Dublin’s National Stadium, the only purpose-built boxing stadium in the world, in what will be their first Irish indoor show since 2009. They also play The Big Top in Limerick on 16 March and Belfast's Mandela Hall on 18 March.

"We're definitely anti-Tory. Look at what they’ve done of the country. In the space of two years, they’ve completely destroyed it. We don’t forget that they’re involved in Ireland. It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing."

Ireland has become somewhat of an adoptive home for them.

Paul’s wife, Louise, is from the leafy south Dublin burb of Templeogue, Phil remarks that he has "more friends in Dublin than in Brighton", and then, of course, there is the small matter of their brother-in-law - David Gray, the man who made White Ladder, the biggest selling album in Irish history.

More of Grayser anon. Orbital have just released their tenth album, Optical Delusion, their first since 2018’s Monsters Exist, and while it’s got a puntastic title, there is perhaps a deeper meaning too.

"I first came across the phrase in the Michael Pollan’s book How To Change Your Mind About Psychedelic Therapy," says Paul. "I was listening to the audio book and jogging at the same time, and he quoted that line, which is a quote from Einstein, I just thought, oh hello.

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"I investigated it a bit further and found it’s actually a misquote from Einstein, which goes very well along with the meaning of the phrase. Optical delusion was Einstein’s way of describing relativity of the mind. We all have our own experiences, and nobody sees the world in the same way as anybody else. We’re all in our own little bubble of delusion."

Phil adds, "That’s what it meant to me as well. When Paul mentioned it, I jumped at it and I got a whole tattoo based on it - touching bubbles, you know, because in my life I believed I was in the same bubble as the next person, in relationships or friendships or whatever, and you think you’re together but there have been many, many times in my life when I’ve been mistaken.

"The bubbles are touching maybe but you’re certainly not in the same bubble. It’s a delusion about relationships."

They may have campaigned against John Major’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994, which sought to put manners on the rave scene and acid house, but Orbital have never liked to be overtly political, preferring their music to become a soundtrack to whatever economic-social dystopia is unfolding.

But could Optical Delusion just as well be a commentary on the UK’s perilous state since Tory austerity and Brexit?

"It can mean that for you, for example, which is great," says Paul. "I like an open-ended thing that means different things to different people. For me, I don’t do social media, so I don’t get trapped in that echo chamber online for a start, which is really nice."

Optical Delusion, which is the duo’s biggest hit since their Middle of Nowhere album in 1998, features guest vocals from Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, and Dina Ipavic but the track that will stand out for a lot of people will be Dirty Rat, on which Sleaford Mods deliver a characteristically baleful epithet on Brexitain.

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"Well, that’s pretty much how we feel about the Tories," laughs Paul. "Look, I wouldn't necessarily say it that way because I don’t sing or shout but when I listen to Sleaford Mods’ lyrics, I don’t disagree with anything they say, so, yeah, ok. Fair point."

Phil is more direct. "We’re definitely anti-Tory. Look at what they’ve done of the country. In the space of two years, they’ve completely destroyed it. We don’t forget that they’re involved in Ireland. It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing."

"Dave did White Ladder pretty much in his spare bedroom. They couldn't fit the whole drum kit in, so Clune had to record different parts of the drums at different times. Hahaha."

Paul, who is a fan of Cavan folk singer Lisa O’Neill, feels it keener. He met his Templeogue-born wife Louise at a festival in Norway 25 years ago and they have been together ever since.

"My wife is from Dublin, so I’m always embarrassed when I visit Ireland, between Northern Ireland and Brexit, it’s really embarrassing," he says. "I come over to Ireland all the time. We end up in Wexford quite a lot."

Orbital famously recorded their debut single Chime in 1989 inside a cupboard in their parents’ house for less than a fiver and that DIY approach was something that later eh, chimed with David Gray.

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Way back in 1998, Phil and Paul lent Gray, who married their sister Olivia in 1993, Orbital’s old mixing desk back in London. "We were telling him to just record in his bedroom, his spare bedroom," recalls Paul. "I think that mixing desk is in a glass box somewhere, with soup being thrown at it."

"We told him, Dave, you don’t wanna be going to expensive producers. Record it in your bedroom like we do . . . " Phil adds.

"Dave did White Ladder pretty much in his spare bedroom. They couldn’t fit the whole drum kit in, so Clune had to record different parts of the drums at different times. Hahaha."

So, will their famous brother-in-law be turning up on stage at the National Stadium this St Patrick’s night? Paul laughs and says, "Only if he’s got his boxing gloves on."

Either way, it should be a knock-out night.

Alan Corr @CorrAlan2

Orbital play The National Stadium, Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day. Tickets, priced €44.50, are on sale now here. They also play The Big Top in Limerick on 16 March and Belfast's Mandela Hall on 18 March.