The Orb - Orblivion

You know the feeling. You’ve been clubbing all night, your head feels like it’s going to explode and all you want to do is sleep. But you can’t. Your head’s still buzzing and all you need is something to relax to. But what are your options? Watch some telly? Fine, if you like watching the room 101 rubbish ITV supplies us with at night. Listen to some music? Great. Just need to find some mellow relaxing music. Or, more importantly, some mellow relaxing sounds.

And this is where The Orb come into play. They have led the way in ambient music for many years now, consistently creating new sounds and moods to make other such bands seem drab. The new album from Battersea’s finest (yep, they swim in the same river as you) is again a new step forward, although it is not as epic as previous albums. They, like many, have succumbed to the drum ‘n’ bass/jungle formula, which isn’t as bad as it seems. You may think that jungle is the last thing you’d want to chill out to, but The Orb are masters of changing the conventions and merging the boundaries of different genres. The first track kicks off with aquatic music continuously panning from left to right. When it eventually settles down you are sure of two things. One, you are feeling very dizzy. Two, The Orb have come a long way since promoting silly things like clouds and ox-bow lakes. ‘Ubiquity’ is the next track, filled to overflowing with oriental madness but like many such ambient tracks, if you’re not in the right (or should that be wrong) mood, they can seem too long with just the same ideas repeated for upwards of twelve minutes. However, this can’t be said about the manic and short, ‘Pi’, the harmonic sound of a futuristic war. Next you come to the album’s showpiece, the excellent ‘S.A.L.T.’ With ranting about, among other things, barcodes being the work of the devil and theories of evolution, this track is still too short even at eight minutes. Then comes current single ‘Toxygene’, complete with screech of brakes and idiosyncratic "Now wait a minute!". But you can’t help feeling that it is these two factors that make the song so popular. Take them away and you’re basically left with Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’. ‘Passing Of Time’ covers everything from ‘80s synthesised power pop to Bowie at his spaciest, including very doubtful weather forecasts. The album ends with a radio jingle from the ‘50s singing, "America on LSD", (well they couldn’t go a whole album without at least one drug reference). Now suitably relaxed, the ensuing silence lets you fall asleep, but after five minutes you’re suddenly woken up by the alarming sound of musical anarchy which will scare the heebeegeebees out of you for years to come. All in all, an hours worth of TV weather girls, camp fire songs, 1940s show tunes and water droplets make this a freaky but highly enjoyable album.(7)

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