Madonna, drugs and helicopter-trained dogs: the dark, starry life of William Orbit | Dance music
T This was a point in the early 00s when William Orbit was on the verge of becoming interstellar. He was one of the great pop architects of the Y2K era, the Mark Ronson or Jack Antonoff of his time. In 1998 he produced Madonna's Grammy-Sweeping Ray of Light with his magnetic Techno-Lite; Blur is 13 a year later; and made hits for some of the greatest films of the new millennium: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Next Best Thing and The Beach. The latter's lead track, Pure Shores, recorded by British pop group All Saints, was the second highest-grossing UK single of 2000. Echoes of its breathy acoustics and bleepy-bloopy electronica can still be heard in the charts; it was recently championed by Lorde, who said the song was an inspiration for this year's highly anticipated Solar Power album. Occasionally, Orbit, 65, will be at its local Whole Foods branch in Kensington, west London, and Pure Shores will be blowing through