Song of the Day

With its spooky folk-horror video and creepy choral vocals by the Mediaeval Baebes, Orbital have created a post-pandemic anthem that fuses their characteristic dance rhythms with the playground song Ring A Ring O’Roses.

Somehow more sinister when presented in Scandinavian style as Ringa Ringa (just to trigger listeners still recovering from Midsommar), it’s actually taking the nursery rhyme back to its historical roots in the Black Death.

“It was a track made in the pandemic and I felt a real pull to use the vocal from Ring O’Roses, the original pandemic song from the Middle Ages,” says Paul Hartnoll, one half of the sibling duo.

“It made me feel a connection with all those who suffered before without the help of our modern technology. The music reflects the modern world while The Mediaeval Baebes’ vocals take us back to the times it has happened before, an old song becomes relevant again.”

It’s not certain that the rhyme dates back to the bubonic plague of 1665 but the theory, now well established, is that it refers to a “rosy” rash, and posies of herbs to ward off the disease, while the “a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down” refers to the victims’ final moments.

The flaw in the argument is that this theory did not appear until the mid-twentieth century: it’s more likely the rhyme refers to an innocent children’s game in which they form a circle and curtsy at the final line; the last one to do so is the ‘rosie’ and goes into the centre of the circle.

Anyway, it’s a top tune from forthcoming album Optical Delusion, following on from anti-Tory diatribe Dirty Rat, a collaboration with Sleaford Mods, and another great video by Luke Losey, grandson of the great British director Joseph Losey, who has shot Orbital’s videos and live stage footage for the past 30 years.