"Echoes" show 17-W, broadcast 28 Apr 1993 on American Public Radio
transcribed by Mike Brown (i did my best on short notice, honest!)
Alex and Kris have similar voices; I may have attributed a couple of
the quotes to the wrong person.

begin orb segment

[intro from Blue Room, male voice-over:]

They don't say "turn on, tune in, drop out" but that's what they're doing 
from London to San Francisco in a new psychedelic music called rave. It's a 
new music for the cyberpunk generation and it harkens back to the cosmic 
joker parties of berlin, with tangerine dream and klause schulze and the 
be-ins of san francisco with the grateful dead and the jefferson airplane.  
Among the apostles of rave are ambient house producers the Orb, who bring a
free-form approach to sonic collage on songs like little fluffy clouds and
their recent album u.f.orb.  kimberly haas stares into the eye of the orb.

[soft buzzing sound, female voice-over:]

the hum and whine of computers and synthesizers fill the air of bjg recording
studio in london. into this modern drone steps a dishelved, surly figure 
named kris weston, also known as thrash.  punching a few knobs to get some
music out of a tape player, he surveys the equipment with the eye of an 
axe murderer, and assesses his talent.

[intro to u.f.orb]

[kris] ...technology molested ...heh ...the big black mack!

looking like he just woke up, alex paterson sees an equally subversive
design.

[alex] what we're really good at doing in in britain at the moment and the 
last 5 years is bastardizing dance music, to turn it 'round to make it more 
suitable for white audiences as opposed to a purely black audience

[excerpt from majestic]

this is the orb and they're purveyors of a sound that evolved from the
techno beat of detroit to the house music of chicago and the acid house
music of london.  it's a subculture with group names like 808 state, moby,
and orbital, faceless engineers of music driven by samplers, industrial
synthesizer sounds, and 140 drum machine beats to the minute.  it's disco
for the 90s, but with a darker, cyberpunk edge

[excerpt from orbital - speed freak (moby mutation)]

alex paterson was there from the beginning. he started out as a club dj,
mixing records and sound effects in surreal collages of nonstop rhythm and
space.

[excerpt from a huge ever growing...]

sitting on a couch, he smokes a joint, while kris weston rolls one
from the bag of marijuana sitting on the recording console.  they're getting
primed for another mix of music that's been called techno rave.

[alex] a hideous word over here, i've got to tell you that now. from 1987-88, 
there was, it's almost like a, like a punk<?> revolution, there was just a
certain amount of people, in certain areas of england, that were getting
into this house music from chicago and detroit.  and, uh, there was a mix
in it with the ibizia sound, which is a sort of very flamenco style, and very
up-front, and also there was, um, a certain drug had come over from america 
called ecstacy as well, which found its way into a club scene, very
similar to the lsd sort of experience in the 60s with the hippies.  it was a
very much a drug-orientated musical scene.

[excerpt from little fluffy clouds (inner master mix)]

the orb are best known for a spacier style of techno that's been called
ambient house, a term derived from brian eno's ambient recordings, which
paterson listened to extensively.  it's the kind of sound that's heard on 
their 40 minute single the blue room, from the u.f.orb album.

[excerpt from blue room]

[alex] well you're now talking about construction of music where it's verse 
chorus verse chorus bridge end double repeat chorus <blah> ...and that's what 
we're trying to get away from, totally.

steve hillage understands ambient house.  he was the guitarist with the 70s
space band called gong and there's been a resurgence of interest in him since
he collaborated with the orb on their first album, the orb's adventures 
beyond the ultraworld.

[steve] uh, it's what you play at the end of the night in the club, it's what
you play in the chill out room, it's what you play in the car on the way
home, it's what you play on your headphones when you're flying 7 miles high
above the clouds...

[more blue room]

the orb will plunder sounds from anywhere.  in fact, that's how they met
steve hillage, when paterson was playing his rainbow dome musick in a club.
in the orb mix, you can hear dogs barking, minnie ripperton songs, or oxy-10
commercials.  a rickie lee jones interview chargess their hit little fluffy
clouds.  an obscure reggae bass line propels towers of dub.

[excerpt from towers of dub]

[alex] whenever we travel about -we travel about a lot- so whenever we go into
another country, stick on the radio, flick for a few channels ...always pick
up something sort of quite interesting.  especially somewhere like thailand 
or ...america's really good

the orb have been in high demand as remix artists, taking recordings by
other musicians and radically reworking them in the studio.  they've done
it for everyone from depeche mode to mike oldfield's tubular bells.  

[excerpt from tubular bells remix]

they treat their source material with disdain.  if you listen closely to
tubular bells versus the orb, you may hear the melody in there, somewhere.

[alex] yeah, i mean, kris really didn't even want to put that in there.
(laughs) that's the difference in ages, see, see i'm 33, kris is 21, he's 
looking at things saying 'damn i've heard all this anyway, it's like a
little kack, this is doo doo doo doo doo', you know riff of tubular bells,
and i'm thinking, 'this is semi-sacred sort of thing, it's got to be put
on!'  (sigh)  we eventually came to a.. an agreement where we could have a
backward one as opposed to a forward one.

so why do it?

[alex] well, we did need the money. record company won't give us any money,
we have to get some money some way, don't we?

with that, the orb get up from our interview to complete a remix of a new
song.

[excerpt from a new remix in progress, i'm not sure what it was]

as music pounds from the speakers, paterson and weston stand over a 
recording console, punching channels in and out of the mix, throwing
faders up and down, sweeping e.q. into audio extremes, and then suddenly,
the high end drops out.

[alex] kris!

and it stops.

[kris] blew clear ...blew clear
[alex] put some music on blah blah
[kris] oh no thats the last blah blah
[alex] thats it
[3rd guy] did you just fry a speaker?
[alex] yeah

so ends another day for the orb, as blown speakers send them off to the
reception area to play video games.  for echoes, i'm kimberly haas.

[excerpt from blue room, "good-bye, good-bye" train]

from their recent album u.f.orb, this is the orb, and o.o.b.e.
first 4 minutes or so of o.o.b.e.

end of orb segment