[From the Trance Europe Express 2 booklet]

I find FFWD - the King Kongs of the ambient World - indeed it's first, um, 
'super group', whose acronym stands for Fripp, Fehlmann, Weston and Dr 
(Alex) Paterson - inside The Orb's studio, situated down the delightfully 
named Back Passage behind a garage in South London.  Kris Weston (aka 
Thrash), who is wearing a tie adorned with the face of the Mona Lisa, is 
rapidly manoeuvring bites of music around a large VDU with the aid of a 
mouse.

Loud in checks but calm in demeanour, the band's Swiss-German collaborator, 
Thomas Fehlmann, looks at the screen and suggests a few ideas while Alex 
finishes skinning up and listens intently.  Suddenly, layer upon layer of 
nagging, shifting keyboard motifs sail out of the speakers, each seeming to 
take the melody one step further towards a still mysterious destination when 
 - and with no little force - massed drums thunder to the fore.  The effect 
is as unexpected and starting as it is intense.

The 14 minute slice of music is called 'Cod Peace', which to my mind at 
least seems proper because it appears to texturally mirror the attitude of 
neurotic detente or tense stability that exists between countries or 
individuals (just before they got to war).  Maybe it's just called 'Cod 
Peace' because it's got a Cameo snare sample on it.  Either way it'll 
probably end up on an Orb album.

Watching the trio at work , I'm impressed by just how focused and precise 
they are.  New technology may have given people cheap hardwareto make music, 
but original ideas aren't included with the instructions.  While the studio 
may be dotted with wacky visual humour - a graffitied picture of the 
Chippendales torn out of a newspaper, an autographed photo of *Coronation 
Street's* Julie Goodyear - and the titles of many Orb cuts are hilarious, 
there is nothing slapstick about thier music making.  Perhaps this is one of 
the things that attracted the well respected guitarist, Robert Fripp, to The 
Orb.  It was a track that he gave Alex and Thrash that led to the genesis of 
FFWD.

However, Thomas - who contributed a track to the first edition of *Trance 
Europe Express* (Readymade) and has an album due out on R&S - had met Fripp 
over a decade earlier when the one time King Crimson leader was touring 
Germany.  (Yep, FFWD is one of those projects littered with the sort of 
coincidences that, in retrospect, seem to make it's inception inevitable).

"One part of the jigsaw puzzle that actually brought me into music is that 
in 1979 when I was an art student in Berlin I met Robert, +Fehlmann says.  A 
bespectacled and balding chap of pleasant demeanour, Fehlmann continues, 
"Robert came on tour to promote his Frippertronics concept.  I knew a couple 
of people in the record companies and got to talk to him.  I showed him 
around the art school and he gave a free concert there.  Altogether he spent 
a week in Berlin and left a big impression on me.  About a week after he 
left I bought a synthesiser and decided to explore that side of things.

"What influenced me was more Robert's way of thinking and his reasoning. 
 The way he had decided to go into an experimental situation with all his 
energy rather than keep it as just a cheep side project.  I thought it was 
pretty radical of him to turn away from his commercial persona.  These 
things might not be revolutionary nowadays, but at the time I found it 
enlightening that he was pursuing art rather than just following his 
career...so it was nice when after 13 or 14 years all these jigsaw puzzle 
things - including Alex and EG - came together."

Thomas and Alex first started working together at the end of the '80s when 
Fehlmann sent the Doctor a tape of the music he was putting out on his 
Berlin based Tectonic Beats label.  At the time, Alex was an A&R chap at EG 
Records.  He was impressed and went over to Berlin to DJ in a club with 
which Thomas was associated, for an event that coincided with the Wall being 
pulled down.  Since then Thomas has moved from being The Orb's Berlin pal 
and one of the main brains behind Sun Electric to an integral part of the 
band.

"There's a spooky thing about FFWD that Thomas may or may not remember," 
Alex says.  "The artwork for the album, which I pulled out of a book, was an 
image that Thomas had experimented with when he was at art school.  That 
gelled the idea as well: it was like, Hey!  Hang on a minute."

"Yeah I had a cold shudder when I saw that," Thomas says.

"The artwork is a Catholic propaganda poster attacking Martin Luther, 
claiming that Luther+s religion was the work of the devil and that music was 
as well," Alex continues.  "There was a Protestant priest in Germany around 
that time, the eleventh century, who said, Hey, lets have some music in the 
services.  So they started creating religious music in a monastery.  That 
music became part of the whole scenario.  Anyway, the Catholics saw that as 
evil and they tried to ban it.  And that+s why they made this mad picture. 
 Our cover is an interpretation of that picture, it provided the theme as it 
did for Thomas all those years ago at art school.  Considering that picture 
came from a book that was 2000 pages long, a history of the world job, and 
that of all the pictures in the book I pulled that one out..."

"You can't really say more than that," Thomas says.  "When that happened I 
went, now I know why I am here.  It all fits.  It was a good sign."  Indeed, 
just like the quartets names making up the finally apt acronym, FFWD.

'Lucky saddle', the track on Trance Europe Express 2, is the band's debut. 
 Alex, Thomas and Thrash all agree that it and the album 'FFWD', which is 
due to follow on Dr Patterson's and Mr Fehlmann's new label, inter, 
represents the best work they have ever done.

Robert Fripp's thoughts are in the ether because today he is somewhere 
between meditating in a monastery in Argentina (true!) and flying to New 
York.

Alex had got acquainted with Robert - who has also worked with Talking 
Heads, Eno and David Sylvian - during his tenure at EG.  "When I was A & 
Ring there, he would always come up and say, you seem to be the only person 
here who knows what's going on.  He gave me loads of compliments while the 
other people at EG were telling me that it was a waste of time going to 
clubs and listening to dance music and that I should be going to the George 
Robey looking for a proper band to sign."

"Anyway, Robert was giving me all these compliments, which I found strange, 
because two of the first three albums I ever bought were by King Crimson. 
 So it was a bit of a shock to have him saying all this while the rest of 
the idiots in the record company had their arses glued to their seats. 
 Anyway he wanted to do a track with The Orb, it turned out.  But at the 
time we were working with Steve Hillage and the idea of having two great 
guitarists from the same era on the same album was a bit over the top, so we 
left it to a later date."

"We eventually got together in February last year, and some very strange 
things have happened since.  On every session of the FFWD project a relation 
of either myself or Robert's has died while we were doing it, which is 
bizarre.  In a sense that's why we code named the album 'Orbert', because 
Bert was my grandfather's name.  He died last February.  Then when we came 
back to record in BJG last summer, Robert's father had passed away.  And 
when we got back together doing it in the fall my aunt had passed away.  So 
it was like, what's going on here?  So that was another three strange things 
 - things come in threes.  We're planning to do three albums as FFWD."

So did these deaths have an emotional effect on the music?

"Yeah I think so", Alex says.  "Talking from where The Orb is and where FFWD 
is going, it's very emotional.  It's the most emotional record we've done to 
date.  It's a tribute to people rather than just music.  There are moments 
in there that are timeless."

"But the good thing isn't not merely picking up on some sort of tradition," 
Thomas adds.  "If you think about tributes you might be thinking of 
traditional terms of music.  What really struck me and surprised me is how 
new everything sounded each day.  I used to wonder how did we do that?  It 
went almost like on auto pilot, it just flowed.  I have to mention that I 
only came in during the last main phase to finish up this album.  I wasn't 
present at the first album.  It was while they were listening and trying out 
various ways of editing that Alex asked me in."

"It wouldn't have been FFWD otherwise would it?+  Alex says.  "When that 
dawned on me I just thought, oh no!  Check this out!  You see we were doing 
the music before the band's name came up.  Like I said, it initially started 
as an idea for an Orb track but just snowballed from there.  What Robert had 
given us was not a bone of contention for one track, it was obviously an 
album.  And it was completely different to an Orb album as well.  I think 
it's the best thing we've done."

A hands on affair for all concerned - they placed a couch big enough for 
four in front of the mixing desk and all dived in tweaking and enhancing the 
music - the musical and production methods that made 'Orbert' were invented 
by the quartet as they went along, Thomas says, starting with a sixty three 
minute track.

"Like Alex said originally, it was going to be an Orb track, but Alex and 
Kris couldn't decide what to take from it.  It just wouldn't fit.  And then 
I got a tape and everybody decided it would be a different project.  So I 
suggested we take each individual strong idea and build a track around it. 
 The musical input from Robert was very strong because of his prominent 
guitar but he gave that to us almost as source material.  We swapped things 
around, chose bits, added music where necessary and more or less created the 
individual bits afterwards on the basis of the source material.  I quite 
liked that situation where you have something you love and have to work 
around it."

"At the beginning Kris wanted all the tracks to have drums on," Alex says. 
 "By the end of it I was actually fighting to keep two of the tracks with 
drums on because he wanted to take them all off.  It was like from the North 
Pole to the South Pole.  It was funny finding myself in the position of 
having to defend a track with drums on it when I'm known as Mr ambient 
head."

FFWD - in a record shop near you soon and live in your local stadium next 
year.