The Altogether is Orbital

Orbital (band)

Orbital are a British electronic dance music duo from Sevenoaks, England consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll. Their career initially ran from 1989 until 2004, but in 2009 they announced that they would be reforming and headlining The Big Chill, in addition to a number of other live shows...

's sixth studio album and was released in 2001. It features guest vocals by the Hartnolls' brother-in-law, David Gray

David Gray (musician)

David Gray is an English singer-songwriter. He released his first studio album in 1993 and received worldwide attention after the release of White Ladder six years later...

, a sampled Ian Dury

Ian Dury

Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...

, and a version of the Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

theme. It was Orbital's last album for FFRR and received a mixed critical reception.

UK edition

US edition

For the US release, the album was given a double-disc treatment, with many of the songs on the second disc being B-sides

B-Sides

B-Sides is an iTunes-exclusive album from the Coventry Trio The Enemy, consisting of ten songs that were B-sides to the single releases from their debut album We'll Live and Die in These Towns.-Track list:#Fear Killed the Youth of Our Nation...

 from various other releases. Despite being initially billed as a limited-edition release, this version remains the standard US release.

DVD Version

Because the "Strongroom" (Orbital's London studio run by the unofficial "third member", their producer Mickey Mann) had capabilities for mixing surround audio they decided to make a DVD release of The Altogether. The DVD is very rich in content and has an extensive navigation that invites the viewer to explore and try out various things to find hidden features, for example in the Video to "Shadows" there are different angles available. The DVD features some fake commercials and an imaginary children's programme called "Play Factory" (also the video for "Waving Not Drowning"), is featured very prominently. The latter includes actor Brian Cant

Brian Cant

Brian Cant is an English actor, television presenter and writer.-Personal life:Born in Ipswich, he currently lives in Buckinghamshire and is married to writer and director Cherry Britton, sister of TV presenter Fern Britton and actor Jasper Britton. They have three children, daughter Rose, and...

, in a similar role to that as presenter of Play School.

It features mixed audio in stereo, Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...

 5.1 and DTS 5.1. The three hidden bonus tracks "Meltdown", "Doctor?" and "Monorail" (not mentioned on the cover) are Dolby Digital 5.1 only.