The Orb Album: “U.F.Orb”

Possibly the Orb's greatest and most accessable album, U.F.Orb was one of the most defining albums in electronic music's history. It's not a CD you can get tired of easily. The first track, "O.O.B.E." sets the mood for the whole album. It gives off an ethereal feeling, like you're floating far above Earth looking down at all the colors of the world. The title track picks up the pace, getting rather heavy and driving, voices permeating the bleak soundscapes, and giving the feeling of an alien invasion of Earth. The masterpiece of the album, "Blue Room", is a 17 minute epic into alien abduction. Where it starts out giving off the feeling of standing on the seashore where the moon is shining and dolphins are at play, everything quiets down and the air raid sirens belt out across the horizon. Then, the aliens come down and steal you away on an amazing voyage up against the bass rumblings of Jah Wobble and guitar mayhem of Steve Hillage. When they return you back to Earth, you'll be ready to visit the dubby bliss of "Towers of Dub". Starting with a prank call made to an English TV station, you soon find yourself in a field with harmonicas and a wishy washy dub bass playing over the playful barks of Rags the dog. The track warps, and you're climbing the towers of dub with Rags chasing after you. After you've made it out of the towers of dub, "Close Encounters" and "Majestic" take you on a whirlwind tour of the Earth as viewed from far above, with creative sampling dashed through both songs. Then the album comes to a halt with "Sticky End", a ponderous 50 second track of elephants defecating.

With every Orb album to date, the focus of each album seems to get more detailed. Whereas "Adventures..." focused on space as a whole, "U.F.Orb" seems to be more focused into the Earth as viewed from Space. Each new album seems to bfing the Orb's focus back into our planet Earth. I would not hesitate to buy this album.

Undoubtedly one of the greatest albums of recent times, of any genre: I can still put this on and get something fresh out of it.

One of the album's strengths is that it simply defies categorisation: after the first track you've probably settled down for yet another ambient ride, albeit a well-executed one, then you're thrown straight into a bass-driven dance track underlaid with a carpet of Cold War paranoic samples; next we're onto an extended guitar-noodling session and head-trip, followed by a blues harmonica and dog bark duet... it just goes on and on, the inventiveness never flagging.

Samples are humourous and pithy, rarely outstaying their welcome. Genuine musicianship is on display courtesy of Steve Hillage and Jah Wobble, amongst others, which adds enormously to the album's staying power. Epic in scope and sound, and you never quite know just where it's going to next.

A true modern classic - you won't regret buying it.

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.

"O. O. B. E." is perhaps the most enlightening piece of music I have heard come from the Ambient revolution. "The Blue Room" is long and exhausting but nonetheless full of worth. The star of the show is irrevocably "The Towers of Dub." From the odd conversation in the beginning to the tripped-out harmonica, it is perhaps the high water mark of ambient dub. The other songs on the album are all good, and have more beats. If ever one needs to fly through the cosmos, merely put this cd on and all will be well.

By far the Orb's most solid album as a whole. The tracks flow into one another seamlessly, providing an aural experience unrivaled by any other album in the genre of ambient dub. The perfect CD to fall asleep to after an all night party. :)