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The Orb’s rise to prominence in Britain in the 90’s was the most visible example of what was perhaps that decade's most interesting musical hybrid: ambient house (or more accurately, "ambient dub"). Alex Paterson’s druggy melange of slow-motion Chicago house beats, Jamaican dub and Detroit techno coupled with mad voice samples, Eno-esque soundscapes and Pink Floyd-style psychedelia was for a time hugely popular and has been highly influential. While Paterson freely acknowledges the influence of electronic pioneers like the Floyd and the seminal German psy acts of the 70's, The Orb's secret was recasting it’s influences in a quirky, hi-tech dance framework. The style first emerged in the late 80’s from the early acid house scene in Britain and Europe. Exhausted dancers would retreat to special “chill out” rooms in clubs to bliss out on multi-layered washes of ambient sound created by a new breed of DJ’s, among them Paterson and Mixmaster Morris. At the same time Paterson was meeting like-minded people through his job at Brian Eno’s former label Editions EG. After a stint remixing singles for a number of electropop acts and a brief and murky association with infamous dance pranksters The KLF, Paterson eventually teamed up with studio engineer Kris “Thrash” Weston. The pair went on the road and began to attract a following as a live act, and it was in this incarnation that the Orb was eventually launched as a recording group. Their debut album Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld was co-produced with ex-Killing Joke member Youth - whose contribution was huge - and it combines an astonishing diversity of elements. All manner of digital samples - voices, explosions, movie soundtracks, melodies nicked from other artists including Steve Reich and Kraftwerk - are woven into the electronic tapestry. Slow to mid-tempo rhythms come and go, varying from subtle melodic pulses and dub reggae to cruisey breakbeats and relaxed deep house. Paterson’s fascination with science-fiction and space travel is evident throughout, not least on the album’s ridiculously titled centrepiece “A Huge And Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld”. A freestyle mix combining layers of synth chords, sequencer-driven melodies and ethereal chants, it’s pure cosmic bliss. Yet it’s all done with a lightness of touch and relaxed sense of humour that makes any charges of pretentious difficult to sustain. Though Ultraworld is considered by many to be their masterwork, the follow-up U.F.Orb maintains the high standards of its predecessor. The wonderful “Blue Room” with its alien-abduction overtones was originally released as a 40 minute-long single, one of the longest in that format ever made. Although on U.F.Orb the track is half this length it still casts the same strange enchantment with its eerie, siren-like melody driven by a crisp house beat and a sly, hypnotic bass line courtesy of Jah Wobble. With the album’s commercial success (Number #1 in the UK) Paterson and Thrash were attracting plenty of media attention. They went on to cement their oddball status with a celebrated appearance on the BBC-TV's Top Of The Pops, playing chess against a background of swimming dolphins while “Blue Room” warbled into living rooms around the country. Live ‘93 culls tracks from three different concerts they played that year, adding two new Eastern-flavoured pieces to the groups repertoire and re-working the older material in often innovative ways. In retrospect the early 90's was The Orb's golden age. The acid house scene that spawned them has moved on and morphed into other forms and not surprisingly the group has faced a decline in its commercial fortunes, at least in the UK. That the band saw change coming and chose not to simply repeat past glories is commendable, but subsequent album releases have been disorientating to say the least. None are essential purchases. With producer buddy Youth now out of the picture the mini-album Pomme Fritz (1994) emerged as an indulgent and underdeveloped hodge-podge of synth sketches, sound effects and samples. Except for its gently mesmerizing title track it comes uncomfortably close to what you might expect from uninspired Orb copyists. Orbus Terrarum (1995) boasts an eerie classic in "Oxbow Lakes" and some beautifully textured ambient landscapes but the album hedges its bets. Paterson and company seem uncomfortable with the trippy cosmic flavour that came to define the band and texturally the album can unnecessarily jolting and abrasive. The darker Orblivion (1997) is heavy on dub production techniques and technically interesting but - the hit single "Toxygene" excepted - short on compelling grooves and melody and hardly essential Orb. Since the end of the 90's the band's music has continued to shift uneasily between semi-commercial pop (2001's Cydonia album), cold lo-fi techno (on German label Kompact) confusing hodge-podges (Bicycles & Tricycles from 2004) and rather embarrassing early-90's rave nostalgia (The Dream from 2007). Even the dub-heavy Metallic Spheres (2010), a seemingly natural collaboration with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, often gets lost in tunelessness at the expense of Gilmour's natural sense of harmonic progression. So is it unfair to say that The Orb's time in sun has passed? I don't think so, but those early albums remain mighty impressive. On Ultraworld and U.F.Orb the group’s seamless sense of line and flow and quirky looping and sampling techniques make for a modern take on psychedelia that's smart, fun and transcendent. |
