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From the Volume 5 comilation...

O.O.B.E.
recorded live at Aylesbury Civic Centre on June 4, 1992
very special thanks to Kris Needs
original version on the WAU/Mr Modo/Big Life LP 'UFOrb'

The Orb
Alex Paterson : some
Thrash: some more

	The Orb's ALex Paterson leans back, his feet perched imperiously
on the desk in front of him.  Blue smoke near-obscures his impish
features.

	If it was a cigar he puffed, at the age of 32 he could easily
resemble a slightly scruffy businessman.  He's not smoking a cigar.
Against all the odds, Paterson can now do what he likes.  He's a pop star.

	I ask him if things have changed a lot since we last spoke to him.

	"Yeah," he says.  "Things have changed.  Now, every time I say
something, it's almost like it's gospel and people run off and do it.
It's really annoying..."

	Paterson, former Killing Joke roadie and record company A&R man,
noted DJ and joint shaper of the 1990's great ambient harbinger, The KLF's
'Chill Out' album, claims to be the same ordinary geezer he was when he
appeared in Volume One with 'Reefer Spin In The Galazy' over a year ago.
Then The Orb were seen as left-field, post-House pranksters.  Their major
contribution to the world was one monster epic soundtrack 'An Ever
Growing...' and one great dance track, 'Little Fluffy Clouds'.  Plus a
bunch of remixes for the likes of Erasure, Art Of Noise, and Front 242.
They were respected but irreverent and determinedly uncommercial - maybe
even anti-commercial.

	All this changed on June 1 this year when 'The Blue Room' was
released.  At 39 minutes and 58 seconds long, it fell ten tantalising
seconds short of Gallup's upper limit for inclusion in the singles chart
and seemed like a delicious folly.  Alex said at the time: "The important
thing is, you could never have envisaged someone doing a 40-minute single
three years ago.  Everyone was living in a world where you had to have
hit singles to put out an album.  They'd all totally forgotten what it's
meant to be about.  The last thing we want to do is go on Top of the Pops.
How degrading can you get?"

	With characteristic irony, The Orb broke the mould, the broke it
again.  They had a hit single, made the top ten, and apeared on Top Of
The Pops - where they were filmed playing chess.  Subversion has never
been made to look so easy.

	When the subsequent long player, 'UFOrb', emerged, it went
straight to number one in the charts.  An ambient platter at number
one.  Either The Orb were re-writing the rule book, or they were/are
a fortuitous novelty.  Which is it to be?

	Even a year ago, 'The Blue Room' would have been seen as, to
quote Friedrich Nietzsche, "a charming joke".  When asked to explain
the piece, The Orb tell a familiar story about a special compound at
[Wright-]Patterson (yes, really) Air Force Base in America, where
fragments of crashed alien spaceships and even some live extra-terrestrial
critters allegedly are kept.  This place is called the Blue Room.  The
album, it is suggested, carries a coherent narrative - or, at least, a
"coherently mad" one.  "At the end of the day," explains Alex, "what
saves the world is a spaceship full of 'dolphinauts', who tip salt
water all over western civilization so that we have to start all over
again..."

	This is, of course, bollocks, because the music neither hints
at nor implies any of this.  This is The Orb having fun.

	The truth is that, over the past year, our idea of what
'ambient' means has expanded.  The dictionary defines the word as
meaning "surrounding" (literally interpreted by Brian Eno when in 1975
he recorded his first avowedly ambient piece, 'Discreet Music',
designed so that, if played at the correct volume, it would become a
barely noticeable part of the aural furniture).  No mention is made of
fields or sheep or cloudless skies or sparrows singing.  Someone
recently suggested relabelling this type of noise, calling something
less misleading such as 'dubcore'.

	The world is catching up with The Orb and recognising that
there are precedents for their approach: among them Pink Floyd, The
Grateful Dead, Kraftwerk, Can, Eno.  The Orb are no longer a
curiosity.  Their aesthetic has a history.  In 1992, 'UFOrb' makes
sense.  The musical ideas behind it no longer seem obscure and
forbidding - just a bit madder then most.

	Alex Paterson is not averse to this idea.  He has expressed an
interest in mid-period Floyd and cites Eno as a major inspiration.

	"I met Eno when I was working at EG Records, but I never really
sat down and talked to him about music.  I don't think I could have -
I'd have been too shit scared of him.  He was my hero in many respects,
he gave me so much understanding of music outside of the commercial
sphere.  He could make an album based around a single rhythm which
sounded not boring, like it should have, but really hypnotic and soothing."

	Do you think it's significant for the music industry that The
Orb can reach number one in 1992?

	"Yes and no.  The industry hasn't known what was going on for
five years or so.  It's never really come to terms with it.  It's not
like punk, where you could actually go and see a band onstage and say,
Yeah, we'll sign up that and that and that, and then one of ten bands
would stick and you've made your money.  There's no such things as a
band in a club, just loads of records, so they can only see 12-inch
singles.  And they can't get their heads around 12-inch singles
developing into albums."

	Most artists haven't been very good at turning the success
of isolated tunes into consistent albums.

	"No, but because we've had our own label (WAU/Mr Modo, which
Paterson set up with former Killing Joke bassist-turned-producer
Youth), we've had the time and resources to turn our hands to making
satisfying albums, to attacking album tracks like 'Towers Of Dub'
and 'Majestic' (both from 'UFOrb') with the same energy as 'Little
Fluffy Clouds' or 'Ever-Pulsating Brain'.  These are album tracks,
but they stand up on their own and yet sit well within the context
of an album.  The growing up of The Orb is specifically about that."

	Paterson and Thrash went to church-run schools - Paterson,
oddly enough, with Youth - so they  know about conformity and the
rejection thereof.  Do you think you're weird, Alex?

	"I don't, but a few people do, though not necessarily people
who know me well.  There again, I'm not sure I want them to know me
better.  I'd rather live with that 'weird' tag, cos I can always use
it an an excuse when I want to avoid things other people want me to
do, especially record companies.

	"We don't want to be rock stars.  I know all about rock-n-roll
cliches from my days with Killing Joke and I tend to veer away from
them.  We're not really out to get laid - you go to clubs for the
music.  I get more pleasure from all these nice girls telling me,
Oh, I go to sleep listening to you.  That's a nice thought.  But
several friends have strict instructions to punch me in the face if
they ever see me getting into all that ego trip stuff.  And, anyway,
my girlfriend keeps my feet on the ground - she wouldn't stand for any
of that shit!"

	They've also sold out two large-scale tours since the summer,
straddling that gap between the anonymity of dance and the pomposity
of rock with one of the most spectular shows of the year.  But can The
Orb keep it up or will they, having strutted their 15 minutes, merge
into background noise of the dance movement again?  In their favor is
their continuing production work for the likes of Primal Scream, whose
'Higher Than The Sun' they graced so luminously.  But mention future
directions, and Paterson starts talking about reggae, house, punk and
ambient styles.  An earlier Peel session containing a cover of The
Stooges' 'No Fun' is still much in demand and a cover of Hawkwind's
'Silver Machine' is promised.

	"There are so many things we can do that we're getting into
a muddle about what we want to do.  There might be albums full of
one style.  To be on your third album, having been successful with
two experimental albums...do we suddenly try and become serious
musicians or do we carry on as we have?"

	Paterson stops and smiles, realising that I'm more confused
than he is.  Maybe it doesn't matter: 1992 has been The Orb's year.
Who knows what's to come?

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Orbography

The Orb's discography is scattered with remixes and special editions, all
of which were very limited and are now extremely valuable.  In fact, all
you can get hold of now are the two albums, 'Adventures Beyond the
Ultraworld' and 'UFOrb' - even the 'Ultraworld' Aubrey mixes LP was
deleted on the day  it was released.  Anyway, here's a log of their
journey to date - remixes detailed in brackets... It started with the
plain-clothed

'Kiss EP' (MWS 010T) Aug '89

'A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The
	Ultraworld' (MWS 017T) Nov '89 (Remix BLR 027T)

'Little Fluffy Clouds' (MWS 0333) July '90 (Remix MWS R033)

'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' LP (BLR 5) April '91 (Aubrey mixes,
	the ultraworld excursions BLR 14)

'Perpetual Dawn' BLR 46T June '91 ('Orb in Dub' BLR R46)

'Peel Sessions' (SFRCD 118) June '91

'The Blue Room' (BLRDA 75) June '92 (Remix DB81)

'UFOrb' LP (BLR 18) July '92

'Assassin' (BLR DA81) Oct '92 (Remix BLR DB81)

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