Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll & Poet Murray Lachlan Young Parody ‘Home Schooling’ On Forthcoming Single Taken From Their Lockdown-Inspired Album ‘The Virus Diaries’

One half of ground-breaking electronic dance music duo Orbital and controversial poet and performance artist Murray Lachlan Young turn to 80’s hip-hop to distil the terror and challenges of lockdown enforced home schooling, on their latest release of the same name, out today.

Following the government’s decision to announce a new lockdown in England and to close schools to most pupils, parents have been faced with the realisation of juggling working and homeschooling. As if the lockdown wasn’t stressful enough, parents suddenly had to become instant teaching assistants, alongside juggling their full-time roles, with the savior of the occasional qualified teacher led zoom lesson. The nation morphed into an army of amateur Geography, Maths and English teachers all struggling to remember their GCSE’s or formative qualifications.

Hartnoll & Young perfectly parody the experience in their second release from new forthcoming lockdown album ‘The Virus Diaries’. After originally releasing ‘I Need A Haircut’ earlier this year just as the country was beginning to unlock, they now bring us their next experience ‘Home Schooling’. An ode to 80s electro and early hip hop, with flashes of inspiration from Breakdance, Boogaloo, Planet Rock, Grandmaster Flash, Herbie Hancock and of course Paul Hardcastle’s NNNNNN19.

For many it is a mysterious thing to watch their children write an essay on a mobile phone, now that things are slowly getting back to normality, ‘The Virus Diaries’ acts as an audio diary and a snapshot of that moment in time, where the world was upside down. It is also a musical group hug and just the kind of perfectly realised slice of humorous lockdown insight and pop supremacy that the world has been waiting for.

“This album will improve with age; you may not want to be reminded of the whole coronavirus world we now inhabit. I suspect, in time, these observations will be the memory jog of the things that history will leave behind and you will be left asking “what the fuck happened there?” – Paul Hartnoll

The Virus Diaries
Released 25^th June

Tracklisting

Listen To ‘Home Schooling’ Here