"The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld": C/D

yea Terrarum and Orblivion are probably my favorites. Ultraworld is great but it does have some sections I don't really like - "Outlands" is kinda dinky for instance

their recent work is quite good too. COW (Chill Out, World) and Abolition are nearly as good as their classic albums in my view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKxTuz3NA48

this is a banger imo

Yeah Terrarum and Orblivion are both excellent too, in pretty different ways. the sound design on those albums definitely bests Ultraworld, as much as I love the album. One funny parallel between this band and the similarly named Orbital: their 90's runs are so wonderful that I've never properly checked out the albums past that

Abolition is really surprisingly good

Several of their recent albums are great. Chill Out World was really good and the Chocolate Hills LP was great.

Felt like Alex's ego came through in the Kris Needs bio though. Ended up not liking him as much after finishing the book.

I'll start with Chill Out World, I've never heard that one at all

Felt like Alex's ego came through in the Kris Needs bio though. Ended up not liking him as much after finishing the book.

Didn't it come out ages ago, or is this a volume two?

Book came out within the last 12 months.

Huh. I thought I had preordered a new book that's coming out in two months.

missed Chocolate Hills, loving this

The book i'm referring to is called Babble On An' Ting. I purchased it in a bundle with the excellent Sedibus album Alex did with Andy Falconer, so maybe it has a different release date outside of the bundle from the Orb site. The Sedibus album is even better than Chocolate Hills, imo. https://www.discogs.com/Sedibus-The-Heavens/master/2147695

Check it out here. https://sedibus.tmstor.es/products

The vinyl looks to be sold out on this site but the CD, bonus rarities CD, and book is still available.

Ah, I thought you were meaning the Kris Needs Autobio.

I think we’re all talking about the same thing? Kris Needs wrote Babble On An’ Ting. Looks like this isn’t out in the States yet.

No, Mark is talking about Needs Must, Kris Needs' autobiography from 1999; not his biography of Dr LX Paterson from May 2021.

The Sedibus album is even better than Chocolate Hills, imo.

oh Monsieur Fopp you are spoiling us etc etc

Has anyone seen Lunar Orbit, the documentary from a few years ago? It includes footage of them making Moonbuilding 2703 AD, the last record they’ve made for Kompakt.

Going through a bit of an Orb thing of late and interested in the Kris Needs biography. It all sent me back to the Kompakt stuff I reviewed for Stylus back in the day. The version of Lunik on Komplott with the “Singin’ in the Rain” sample remains a career highlight.

(Wait, not the last thing they did on Kompakt – but the first they’d done in a while)

Give me Kris Weston's book now

COW is an incredibly great album surrounded largely by drivel. The Alpine EP being a massive exceptiom

n?

Abolition & Moonbuilding are both pretty good, I think.

imo all the Orb proper albums have a few great tracks...outside of some of the collaborative stuff I don't think anything they've done has been outright bad.

Give me Kris Weston's book now

(I’m assuming this story is bunk but it’s certainly on brand)

Well, you know if you drop off asleep then wake suddenly, it can seem like half an hour whereas it's really been 3 minutes..

the orb is ultimate time dilation music

There was a great Q&A with Kris Weston a while ago on Gearslutz forum. Lots of info about how they recorded the albums and (a fair bit of airing of dirty Orb laundry tbf). Its deleted now but lives on in the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140729193514/http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-electronic-music-production/871685-q-kris-weston.html

That’s a pretty incredible interview – there’s even some shade thrown Kris Needs’ way. Even if you assume Kris was super salty (and clearly depressed) about how things went down with Paterson, it pretty clear LX has always relied on having a more traditional musician to collaborate with. Cauty —>Weston—>Fehlmann.

Does the web archive have a way of you accessing the other pages of the discussion? I have some of these pages archived on Evernote but not all of them.

I dicked around a bit but couldn’t trick it into showing me past page 1

Weston aired a lot of that on his personal webpage too. for better or worse it's offline now. while I've no doubt some unseemly things happened during the early era of the band I've started to suspect the man is full of shit. like sure man I believe that you and you alone were the sole creative genius behind The Orb when you also happen to be the one member who's done exactly nada in the last 25 years

ouch, tough but fair

He’s clearly otm that LX has no technical or musical ability to speak of. He just stays bitter about it, instead of observing that the good doctor’s incredible gift is in getting anyone that he’s around to write and produce music that sounds like The Orb, rather than whatever they do on their own.

If he accepted that this alchemy resulted in hours of music that he’s still proud of, perhaps he could have kept pissing off when he got frustrated, then coming back for an album or three every time he got over it, the way Fehlmann and Youth dip in and out at their own paces.

right - even listening to his DJ sets I'm kind of struck by how much he fucks up. but his taste is often impeccable.

fwiw I don't think Weston is just making shit up, when he talks about gear it's clear he knows what he's talking about. that said every time I read his ranting I always wonder what the other side of the story is. it's always shit like "I did everything, all the good ideas were my ideas, everything that got messed up was someone else's fault, I tried to fix it but they were so jealous of my talent that they wouldn't let me touch anything". it reminds me of the Mike Doughty book where he spends half the pages trashing Soul Coughing, saying he hates all the music because it was ruined by his bandmates while at the same time being desperate to take credit for all of it. then when he made his own album of Soul Coughing songs "as he originally intended them" it fucking sucked. But at least he's still making something!

Weston is obviously talented but his almost total lack output since leaving the Orb speaks to what I imagine is a somewhat toxic personality fed at least in part by what seems to be clinical depression. No matter how you slice it, it’s sad.

By contrast, Alex almost certainty has an ego and based on the fact that his first two collaborators both departed levying the same criticism—that he wanted more credit than his contributions warranted—it’s probably somewhat outsized relative to his actual musical ability.

And yet, 30 years later this stoner dude’s music continues to provide me with comfort, laughs and inspiration. That’s likely because, whatever his own merits are as a “proper musician,” Alex has always had a very clear-eyed view of what the Orb is and should be.

Nowhere is that clearer than on this thread’s namesake, Ultraworld which has by my count over a dozen writers (even if you exclude the artists credited for their samples). Since that time, he’s weaved and bobbed from acid house and dub to clickety clackety microhouse to dub and pure ambient with very little friction – in some cases within a single track. He’s consistently chosen his collaborators well and maintained most of those relationships (perhaps less consistently) over decades. As a result, no matter how transparently they wear their influences on their sleeves and influential the Orb has been in their own right, every record still sounds like pretty much no one else.

It’s honestly incredible.

Patterson won me over for good by sticking two Longmont Potion Castle samples on two different Orb records

OK ya gotta be more specific there!

"Rolo" on Okie Dokie opens with an LPC sample ("can you repeat the word Rolo?")

there's also a track on The Dream that uses the "would it be permissible for me to maneuver your donuts?" call. I don't remember which track it is though. I would guess it's "Beautiful Day"

funny these are two consecutive albums so I guess we know when his LPC phase was

I'm about halfway through "Babylon and Ting" and loving it. I'm not quite at the point where the post-U.F.Orb comedown begins and, I assume, Weston goes off the rails. But it's been a joy thus far -- with Needs really doing a bang up job of bringing so many threads together. I was initially a bit skeptical given his friendship with LX, but all told it really embosses the whole thing in a delightfully warm glow which feels appropriate.

Plus, this excellent playlist companion has been keeping me going: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0GHeWVveiTf7rOExtHUMqD?si=3e2891cb0d1042e5

(a mere 44 hours of supplementary listening!)

going to see The Orb play this album and UFOrb tomorrow. will it be good? dunno but should be fun because going with a big group of people

it was in fact good.

venue could've published the fucking stage times though, we got there at 7:45 and the Orb were already on stage.

it was fine, we were all suitably chemically refreshed and they played Little Fluffy Clouds at the end.

Nice, didn't know they were doing this. Did any particular track feel like a highlight? Could've added 'Assassin' in there.. setlist.fm seems to suggest they didn't play every UF Orb track at other venues than Brighton's or maybe contributors were too refreshed to remember :)

sounds like a great night.

have always wondered why it is so impossible to get stage times from venues, swear this used to be googleable info

Yeah I saw them play this album back in 2017, I figured it'd be two people on stage, it was maybe six? Such a good time.