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Orbital is the second album from British electronica duo Orbital. In the United States the album had the title Orbital 2 on the spine of the album: in the rest of the world outside the US the album was released without a title, and it is commonly known as The Brown Album to differentiate it from Orbital's similarly untitled 1991 debut album, which had a green cover. It was released in May 1993 and reached the #28 on the UK album charts.

On Orbital the duo aimed to make more atmospheric music than the dance raves of their first album. They used more complex rhythms and denser arrangements on the appropriately monickered pieces entitled "Lush" but still proving themselves capable of making quality pop music on "Halcyon + On + On", with vocals from Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus III.

The album begins with "Time Becomes", which features the same speech sample (by actor Michael Dorn in Star Trek: The Next Generation - Time squared - Season 2 Ep. 13, Worf - 20'30 : "There is the theory of Möbius. A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop") which opened their first album. The piece uses phasing, a technique popularized by Steve Reich, in which two identical samples are repeated at slightly different speeds.

The second song on the album, "Planet of the Shapes", contains a sample from the movie Withnail & I; the sample is: "even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day".

"Remind" is based on Orbital's previously-released "Mind the Bend the Mind" remix of "Mindstream" by Meat Beat Manifesto; it is effectively an instrumental version of that mix, with the last remaining elements of MBM's original track removed.

The brothers enjoy aural puns, and the use of the sample from Star Trek: The Next Generation (which appeared on the opening of their first album) was meant to play with listeners by making them believe for a few seconds that they had bought a mispressing. The muffled intro on "Planet of the Shapes" has the intentional addition of record static and crackles, followed by the sound of a needle skipping grooves then scratching across the record, also meant to trick fans who bought the vinyl edition, by making them think their copy was less than mint.

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