The Orb at Tramshed, Cardiff
Fri 9 Dec
Influenced by Pink Floyd and Brian Eno as much as acid house, The Orb seem from another galaxy, and date back to another time, when compared to much of today’s club listings. Journalist Matt Anniss tells of how their track Blue Room flowed out of the radio in 1992 during the Radio 1 top 40 show, unlike anything that had come before it. The full track was a 40-minute swell of acid house drums slowed down to a trippy throb, with a huge, languid dub bassline and the eclectic sampling style of hip-hop. It balanced powerful emotional dynamics with a kind of meandering nonchalance, or even nonsense, at times.
The Orb is approaching its 30th year now, and has never stopped revolving, or glowing, or whatever orbs do. Founded by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty, the latter a member of notorious ambient-rave crew The KLF, it’s featured many members over time, but Paterson is the one constant – he’s been joined for the last few years by Thomas Fehlmann, himself an important Swiss-German electronic music pioneer since the 1980s.
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This tour celebrates the 25th anniversary of The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, the group’s 1991 album. This album was formative for me too. Not when it came out – I was three – but years later, I remember floating through the school corridors with my Walkman, listening to the skanking dub-house of Perpetual Dawn, the sky-gazing trip anthem Little Fluffy Clouds and the final track, whose enormous title and 20-minute length I delighted in showing off to friends: A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Live Mix MK 10).
However, this tour is not just about nostalgia; it also features the debut live outing of their new album, released last month on evergreen Cologne-based label Kompakt. It traverses some less house-centric facets of The Orb’s sound, taking in surreal distortions of easy-listening jazz, hip-hoppy sampler rhythms, drifting post-techno jetstreams and ‘classic’ sounding ambience – including a collaboration with Roger Eno. The album’s title is COW/Chill Out, World!; good advice right now.
Tickets: £20. Info: 029 2023 5555
words GWYN THOMAS DE CHROUSTCHOFF