Largely a victim of "what have you done for me lately?" status, Orbital emerged at the turn of the 1990's as an instrumental dance duo to be reckoned with, and "Chime" was not only their entry point into crossover acceptance but also one of the grand compositional epics that cemented acid house/techno's imperative to be taken seriously.
Bearing all the upbeat, X-static hallmarks of underground club music of its day, "Chime" double down by demanding an exacting attention span: the song builds and builds to a near-10 minute climax in a different manner than most extended tracks of its day, which largely just consisted of repeating the main hook over and over, with just enough filler downtime to get dancers anticipating the reintroduction of the main theme. "Chime" took a slower simmering build that compounded rather than repeated itself, in a way that much anticipated trance (the drone-like German kind, not fucking Darude).
The result is an endlessly remixed classic whose staying power is not only attributable to its innate excellence but also its malleability: in spite of the sprawl this track was designed by birth to be torn down and built back up again in other DJ's images, from further acid house excursions to drum & bass, breakbeat and beyond.
