The Orb - U.F.Orb

It was over almost as soon as it began.

In 1992, The Orb were the toast of the town. At the time, their debut Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld was the longest, most ambitious, and most successful electronic album ever made. They collaborated with Jimi Cauty of KLF infamy, and had a high-profile production spot on Primal Scream's rock/house cross-over Screamadelica. Their second album, U.F.Orb, was pretty much destined to hit number one.

But, even here, at the peak of their success, the cracks were showing. On this album, they greatly cut back on their use of samples, possibly as a reaction against critics who accused them of not writing enough original material. U.F.Orb has a greater focus on music, as opposed to sound collage. Unfortunately, The Orb were good at sound collage, but very mediocre at writing music. Without the benefit of repeating sampled voices, sound effects, and danceable beats, the opening track "O.O.B.E." is really bland. All that remains is one plodding progression of ambient chords, stretched out to thirteen minutes. Even when the samples appear, they're not that interesting -- a guy talks about "the world of objective contents of thoughts," which I guess is as close as The Orb ever came to being cerebral.

The album's centerpiece, the seventeen-minute "Blue Room," also fails. It has its moments, like the five-note plinking keyboard line that pops up about a third of the way through. The track could have been salvaged by following the blueprint of the similarly-endless "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld" from the first album -- that is, using the five-note keyboard line as the backbone of the song, then phasing the soft ambience in and out and combining it with samples. The alien/conspiracy theme referred to by the title would have been a great subject for a spooky sound collage. But "Blue Room" is much too jarring to have that kind of effect. Halfway through, they remove the ambience and bring in an obnoxious loud beat, too loud to chill out to, but too slow to be danceable. This is backed by a meandering bassline from Jah Wobble, whose guest appearances (also on Screamadelica) are very over-rated in my opinion. It's not very good groove material, and even then it's repeatedly interrupted by whirring and clanging of some kind. The single edit of this song was forty minutes long, but the album version is already taxing enough.

On the other hand, the six-minute title track, which almost seems like a throw-away next to the other, much longer tracks, is actually really good. It's also the closest in style to Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld. First, in a long ambient intro, the band uses a sample of a Radio Moscow broadcast about Gagarin's space flight. Levitan's mighty voice, already stately and portentous, is slightly downtuned to sound even more dramatic. Then, the track changes into an excellent house groove with a very catchy bass line. The bass sounds much cooler and funkier than Jah Wobble's playing in "Blue Room." If only six perfect minutes could salvage a seventy-minute album.

The second side is more playful. There is a truly lovely part in "Towers Of Dub" where a cheerful harmonica plays while echoing keyboards form the classic staccato reggae rhythm in the background. But even so, that track is way too long. The harmonica-keyboard climax occurs halfway through, and after that is mostly just drums and bass. The use of keyboards and dub echoes to play the rhythm is an original touch, but The Orb's best techno-reggae fusion is still "Perpetual Dawn" from the first album.

The last two tracks are more dancefloor-oriented. Both are competently made, and the keyboard line in "Majestic" is the best pop hook on the whole album. At the same time, they don't have much individual character. "Close Encounters" is particularly bland, consisting mostly of repeated rhythmic keyboard rattles. It's listenable, but there are many other dancefloor tracks out there, by other bands, with charismatic vocals, memorable lyrics, or inventive beats, which are all lacking here. "Majestic" has a sample of some woman talking about how great it is to appear on TV, but that's just...boring. Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld had far odder and more diverse samples. I'd rather listen to the nature documentary in "Spanish Castles In Space."

The length really hurts the album. Most of it isn't too bad, but the whole thing is so numbingly long that listening to it is a chore. Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld was even longer, but it had enough great singles, dispersed evenly throughout, to hold one's attention. But here, even the good moments (except for the title track) are more like brief flashes of inspiration within horrendously long tracks. U.F.Orb would have been better as a vinyl LP.

Things only got worse later. The Orb got bogged down in a label conflict, and were quickly pushed out of the spotlight by other techno bands. The Orb's audience dwindled, and they came up with no new ideas aside from the ambient-house they introduced with their first album. From their entire career, I recommend Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, which is quite enjoyable and entertaining, but I don't recommend anything else. October 3, 2008

A Scientific Journey for Orb Pioneers

Since releasing Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, I think U.F.Orb is where DJ's like John Digweed got influences. This album is good because it is almost like a soundtrack of some sci fi music when having the listening experience with some tracks that give energy. Favorites on this disc are U.F.Orb, Towers of Dub, Close Encounters, and Blue Room.

If you like Future Sound of London's release of Lifeforms and Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, dig your ears in this!! The Frank De Wulf mix of Blue Room kicks butt!! October 14, 2007

Drone ship in orbit...

I got this album when it was released back in 1992, it is the limited 2 disc set, the first being the complete U.F.Orb album, the second disc being the complete "Blue Room" (running at 39:58 minutes, and also made it to #8 on the UK charts back then) with two edits and a fourth track titled "Assassin." Compared to some other ambient music in my collection from back then, these two albums have aged extremely well. I think the key to this is the number of different sounds and samples - it never relies on synth pads to make its point. All of the music on both discs have enough burbles, wild cat noises, NASA conversations, throat clearings, melodies show snippets (one funny one; a portion of the background intro music from the Nintendo SNES game "Darius Twin" appears as the main melodic line in "The Blue Room (Remix)" on the bonus disc - fits in amazingly well, has a great sinister sound to it) and interesting sounds to make it a happy listen.
The 40 minute version of "Blue Room" and "Towers of Dub" are my favorites, Towers features some nice harmonica work and a great sample from Woody Allen's "Sleeper." One of the most played albums from my collection. Thank you very much Alex Paterson. Highly recommended - buy the album, take it for a spin and go meet Haile Selassie at Babylon & Ting. November 26, 2006

The sound of an epoch

This is a condensed version of the original triple vinyl release of 'U.F.Orb', which came 'hermetically sealed' in blue-grey PVC and had to be cut open with knife or scissors - a typically elaborate Paterson/Cauty marketing gimmick that also seemed to say something about how they viewed The Orb as a cultural project. It was as if 'U.F.Orb' was a time capsule, a distillation of the sprawling experiments on 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld', a sealed container flung into space to show the rest of the universe what it was like on Earth (or at least in Britain) in 1992.

As a summation of a point in musical time, it's as evocative as 'Revolver' or 'Ziggy Stardust' or 'Sound Affects'. And like all of those, there's something ineffably British about the way The Orb took beats from Detroit, minimalist compositions from New York and dub from Jamaica, and stretched and warped them into a completely new form. If the clubs were full of house and techno, the bedrooms were full of smoke and ambient dub, and The Orb were responsible for much of it.

'U.F.Orb' is their finest achievement, proving that 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' wasn't a novelty record but the herald (along with The KLF's 'Chill Out') of a new genre. The sound here is both denser and more dubby, with more going on but less dependence on the BBC sound effects records and slowed-down house beats that were the backbone of their earlier work. 'Blue Room' (here edited from its 39'58" single length) and 'Towers of Dub' are the standouts, but The Orb's legacy is even more impressive than their music. You can hear it not only in experimental 'dance' music from Shpongle to Monolake, from Portishead to Lemon Jelly; it's embedded in mainstream pop, soundtracks and muzak the world over. And if you still have that triple vinyl release, with the PVC intact, I bet it's worth a fortune. July 23, 2005

One of 'Ambient House's' Most Enduring Classics.....

Before Acts such as 'The Orb' (as well as: 'The Black Dog, The Klf, Biosphere & Global Communication), the only sort of ambient music largely recognised by the general public, was the reflective sort of reflective, somber compositional ambient music favoured by the likes of 'Brian Eno'. But acts like 'The Orb' with their 'Ambient-House', was a relatively new term/Genre. It took the serenity & cerebral atmospherics of 'Ambient', and coupled them with synth pads, strings, keyboards, sampling & midtempo beats, to create a dreamier and progressively freewheeling sound of 'House' & 'Electronica'. The Duo (Dr. Alex Paterson & Jimi Cauty) take the technique of eclectic sampling, and a heavy emphasis on beat-oriented sounds, and reverb, bass and percussion, and forged several exceptional albums that retained the textured, placid tones of ambient, with the post-rave rhythmic aesthetic of Electronica. And coupled it with trip-hop grooves that successfully marry, themed tracks of 'Space Travel', Spoken Word, floatable tones & ethereal melodies.

The first track "O.O.B.E." brings with it, a soothingly cinematic synth arrangement, that is a fair indication of the sort of widescape sound, that you can expect from this stunningly atmospheric track. Think of the sort of Hushed, and delicate ambient textures used on 'Brian Eno's' ambient series of albums, with the serene lilting ambience, that his albums were acclaimed for, but with slight piano keys interspersed & the most restrained use of vocal snippets, that seem to touch on subjective and conscious thoughts...this is electronic music for the mind. And the use of looped beats isn't intergrated until some 6 Min's into the track, signalling the transition into Ambient-House. The theme here (and throughout the album in fact), is 'Travelling Through Space', with various metallic techno-futuristic samples, and dense detached rhythms & free-form ambience, seamlessly intergrated. Yet still retaining that all important balance between subtly detached ambience, and possessing synthesised ambient beats mixed with vocals.

The second track "U.F. Orb" mixes swirling, cascading synth work & expertly modified vocal sampling (alarm sounds, Dialogue from the 'Space Program', Environmental sounds...etc), before being replaced with uptempo techno beats (with a sublime use of high-hat rhythm breaks) moving at a relatively quick pace, that works alongside a superb, heavy echoey reverberated dub bass sound. Although the actual arrangement is simple, in its implementation, the effect is similar to a particularly well-judged fusion of World Music mood and instrumentation, intergrated with the smoked-out sounds/grooves of instrumental Dub. This is a beautiful pairing of Western Dub Fusion, and a complete contrast to the subtle tones of the previous track.

"Blue Room" is a epic track, the likes of which the 'Air-Raid' sirens to signal the beginning of the track should make that painfully clear, this is then mixed with subtle organs playing in the background, with subtle sounds & buzzing electronic sounds (along with a curious bubbling effect) and cold industrial sounds are all skillfully placed, with the effect carefully intergrated through the use of cleverly Cut & Manipulated editing, that fleshes out the long stretches of atmospheric organ. The occasion female vocal sample of "Awwwww- Whoooah" (taken from a early 90's UK Rave Track), provides the perfect canopy for the transition into thumping bass, that feels like its been modified to emulate thumping beats, this is insistent driving bass, with the harsh edges softened to resemble late-night Ambient-techno. Various snippets of mechanical sounds, Dialogue, Turntable effects (turntable spinback effects) & engaging synths, are all overlayed throughout the track, but care has been taken to give ample space to each sound, and thoughtfully stretched out intelligently over the 17Min's that this track runs to, and such is the beautifully devised arrangement, the time literally flys by, when listening to this astonishing track.

The overriding musical theme for "Towers of Dub" is (Obviously) DUB!!, a recorded telephone message or someone ringing "London Weekend Television" (UK television Broadcast), and getting through to a security guard to leave a message, is a highly amusing (or disorientating if you live outside the UK), start to the track. Bizarrely, the frequent use of : dogs barking, chirping birds and rhythmic sounds float in and out of the mix, are all firmly put in the shade by a truly stunning Harmonica sample playing throughout the track, mixing wonderfully with the heavy instrumental Dub, that is produced with pin-point keyboard and electronic sampling, and skitting drum beats audible in the background, the effect of these decidedly synthetic dubby basslines, could arguably have been the work of some of the Dub greats such as "The Mad Professor" or legendary "Lee 'Scratch' Perry", had they decided to make a more electronically orientated album, it's in turns, sophisticated, sprawling and hypnotic, and yet uptempo enough for either late night or daytime listening...working equally as well, whether your chilling out, or merely need some music to lose yourself into. And is so expertly judged and produced that is highlights one of the finest examples of Ambient-House.

The remaining 3 Tracks are all equally up the stunning quality of previous tracks, "Close Encounters" shifts the tempo, and moves into a combination of a blended Chicago electro-house orientated track, matched against the stylisation and experimentation of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), and the low-end ambience of "Majestic", manages to feel like a surreal dreamlike track, encapsulating rhythmically and conceptally, the best attributes of 'The Orb' in an 11 minute breakdown, that at times feels like tightly crafted melodies, and creative samples, working in perfect unison.

There should be absolutely no doubt, that If you are a fan of either 'Ambient House' or 'Ambient Dub', (albums Such as: "Aphex Twins - Selected Ambient Works", "The KLF - Chill Out", "Future Sound of Londons - Lifeforms", "The Black Dogs - Bytes"), that this album is an absolutely essential purchase.
I'm reviewing this album have listened to it for the first time now in 2005, even though it was intially release back in 1992....and surprisingly it still feels vital, and doesn't feel dated. Admittedly if this is your first 'Orb' purchase, then (takes deep breath), you should pick up their incredible "The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld" (Double Cd) first, as it is the Duo's Definitive work, with this album a very, very close second. But that album's a sprawlling masterpiece which is a concentrated listen, whereas this albums single cd, is far more manageable listen. And unquestionably stands as one of the genre greatest exponents. July 21, 2005

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