William Orbit died at home on 23 July. His family announced it on 7 August. We are six weeks late on purpose, because the obituaries written that week were pop obituaries. They had Madonna. We have a filing cabinet, and the William Orbit in ours is a remix credit.

DJVibe has been running his name since 2004, and not once as a pop producer. Our post on Depeche Mode's Remixes 81-04 put him among the remixers the band worked with early, in a line with Francois Kevorkian, Adrian Sherwood, Portishead and Air. The bonus-disc tracklist we printed that October credits his Random Carpet Mix of "Walking In My Shoes" to 1993, five years before Ray of Light. In 2009 we caught Ferry Corsten before his Australian Cream shows, and the credits on that interview page list Orbit among the artists Corsten had remixed, next to U2, The Killers and Moby.

Eighteen years before Ray of Light

He formed the ambient electronic trio Torch Song with Laurie Mayer and Grant Gilbert in 1980. He took Bassomatic into the UK Top 10 with "Fascinating Rhythm". By 1993 he was deep into the Strange Cargo albums, and Strange Cargo III carried a young Beth Orton on a track; he produced her debut Superpinkymandy the same year.

So when Madonna's manager invited him to submit tracks for the album that became 1998's Ray of Light, he had been building that palette for eighteen years. The Guardian's description of what he brought her is backings "rooted in trip-hop, jungle and techno". Those are club instincts pointed at a vocal.

Barber, twice

The clearest case is his electronic reading of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. An earlier 1995 version was deleted from sale after an objection from the composer Arvo Pärt. He went back to it for 1999's Pieces in a Modern Style, and with a trance remix from Ferry Corsten it reached the UK Top 5 that year. Corsten, in the condolences under Orbit's final Instagram post, called the session "a moment that changed my career and opened many doors in electronic music".

Strings into trance is a move that ages badly when it is done for the lift. It aged well here because Orbit was not decorating the Adagio. He was doing what he had already done to a Depeche Mode single and would do again to a Madonna vocal: finding the tempo and the texture at which an existing thing becomes a room.

We made the same argument in August without intending it as a tribute. Writing about Sasha and Digweed pulling the drums off Northern Exposure, we put Orbit in a list with Keiichi Suzuki, The Future Sound Of London and Banco de Gaia, and said they are on that ambient disc not because the tempos are compatible but because of where they land in the shape. You earn that placement by hearing a mix as an argument about order.

Giuseppe Ottaviani played those 2009 Cream dates alongside Corsten. He is one of the names in the condolence thread now, with Fatboy Slim, Goldie, Sister Bliss and Pig&Dan. Small room, long memory.