“What is this? I never heard any music like this in my life before… and if I ever have I don’t know where I heard it!”
More often than not a first encounter with an artist’s work tends to remain one’s favourite: personifying perfection, or simply eliciting so much nostalgia that one can’t help but remain biased towards it. Strangely this was never the case for me with the Orb’s first masterwork, the epic double album The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. Like many, I look to their second album for that example of near pure perfection. Their debut was, however, one of the most important records I ever purchased and a primary catalyst for my love of electronic music, blasting my musical tastes apart and opening up entirely unexpected doors through which a dazzling multitude of exciting new sounds would pour over the coming years. I wasn’t alone on this journey at the time either, the album also converting several friends of mine to the cause, whose previous music tastes I had thought would send them running from this new found “ambient house” style.
Furthermore, although the album opens with perhaps its most famous track, the at the time ubiquitous “Little Fluffy Clouds,” I had never actually heard this track in its entirety until I bought the album. Rather it was while staying up late on school nights with my headphones on secretly listening to John Peel’s late night Radio 1 show that I discovered The Orb (and later made the connection to the “Peace In the Middle East” record that I had heard prior to that but never know the origin of) via several other tracks, and decided on the strength of this strange new material that I had to seek out and buy this record immediately.
I didn’t own a CD player at that time (all those tacky plastic jewel cases, nasty little booklets and microscopic artwork weren’t convincing me at all) so it was the “Special Classical Pressing” on heavyweight double-vinyl that I found gracing the shelves of my local HMV in Portsmouth one lunch-time that I ended up purchasing (the format which actually ultimately shapes the structure and listening experience of the album, even on the double CD version). The LP sleeve features the iconic Battersea Power Station artwork rather than the stripped-down Designers Republic star logo that adorned the CD package, a visual reference to Pink Floyd that mirrored the prominent sample on the ludicrously titled “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre of the Ultraworld,” both of which were completely lost on me at the time.
I’ll always remember that day for so many reasons. The purchase, pouring over the artwork and credits, the impatience I felt as I waited for the school day to end so I could actually go home and listen to what was my first double-LP purchase ever. And then, of course, there was the listening experience itself. Announcing rather precociously to my parents (who were used to this kind of thing by now) that I wasn’t to be disturbed, I then set about the important task of slouching in my room and listening to the entire album uninterrupted. I emerged from the experience literally stunned. The next day I was demanding that my friends go out and buy this album at once! Some of them even did.
It seems rather redundant to even comment on “Little Fluffy Clouds.” If you haven’t heard it before… well… which planet have you been holed-up on for the last decade or so, hmm? In typical Orb style, this inherently very silly and historically litigious sample-fest classic is followed up by the album’s most dramatic moment, “Earth (Gaia).”. This was the track that really had me hooked, from the Flash Gordon samples of Ming the Merciless preparing to destroy the Earth for his personal entertainment, to the huge, soundstage filling bass drone that overwhelms the senses. It remains one of the most potent tracks in the Orb’s catalogue. It’s strange that there were never any prominent remixes of the track, and it is conspicuous by its absence from the remix album issued the following year.
Adventures… isn’t without its flaws. At times its attempts to achieve an epic and grandiose scale are thwarted by a simple lack of excitement or variation. “Supernova at the end of the universe” and “Back side of the moon” are both great tracks, but one is essentially just a remix of the other. The key elements are the same, but one has beats and the other doesn’t. You can clearly hear the first steps being made towards the epic scale of Blue Room in these two tracks, but at eleven minutes fifty-five and fourteen minutes there is simply not enough going on to really sustain interest and the album flags a little at this point. It also doesn’t help that the two tracks don’t flow into one another either. They appear on different sides of disc one on the LP version, and the CD contains a clear break between the two. “Backside of the moon” tends to suffer accordingly, a pity since it is the superior piece in my opinion, the beats on “Supernova at the end of the universe” detracting from the weightless, floating-through-space feel. What’s more, of all the pieces on here they have probably dated the most and sound more new-agey than much of the rest of the Orb’s back catalogue.
The legendary “Spanish Castles in Space” saves the day, every time, however. This track, more than anything captured my imagination and brought me back to “Adventures…” time and time again. It’s hard to believe that The Orb got away with beginning their live tour with a full fourteen minute version of this track, as audiences simply stood and swayed, dazzled by the lightshow that seemed designed to draw focus away from the pair behind all that electronic equipment. “Spanish Castles in Space” is the aural equivalent of a long walk in the park on a hazy summer’s afternoon. What starts of as a stardust littered, chilly exhalation slowly gives way to trickling piano keys cascading through warm, sun-drenched hills and fields amid bird song, grasshopper chittering, the distant passing of traffic, cow-bells, insert field recording here… We walk through all of this to the tempo of the bass that is once again key to the piece, this time a looping double-bass performed at a languid gait by Guy Pratt. After the outer-space journey of the previous two pieces, “Spanish Castles in Space” is the pastoral and soothing vacation spot you arrive at, and if you’re not close to sleep by the time the droplets of water echo around a cool, secret cave in its closing moments, then you’re just not doing it right!
In contrast, the second disc reveals the much livelier, dancier Orb that would take over for the next few years. “Perpetual Dawn” exists here in a much less in-your-face form than on the single released sometime later, where the “blrblblrblblrblblrbl” was joined by Manessah’s new vocals and a much punchier rhythm and bass section. A distorted rocket take-off countdown provides a false start to the proceedings as it quickly mutates into a shuffling roots reggae track. “Into The Fourth Dimension” – a track that had already appeared as a b-side to the “Little Fluffy Clouds” singles – operates as a sort of link to the superior “Outlands.” This is the track on Adventures… that is probably the most reminiscent of the work of The KLF, all hefty dub bass, loping beats, myriad and out of this world samples.
There’s always one track that sticks out of an Orb album at an odd angle, and for me it is “Star 6 & 7 8 9” on Adventures…. Paterson’s wicked sense of humour rears its head from the outset, as a fly/wasp/bee buzzes through the glistening fx for a few moments before getting slammed out of the sky. It’s an oddly bright (and short) piece to place near to the end of an album centred around epic soundscapes and indulgent excess. It also contains one of the few Orb samples that I actively dislike. “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld” is another classic Orb epic. The “live” mix featured on the album is a slightly cut down version of the original, an almost nineteen-minute leviathan of ascending chords and unashamedly prominent samples. There’s the aforementioned Pink Floyd guitar sample, some chorusing “aaaahs” from Grace Jones’ “Slave to the Rhythm” and of course the entirely lifted segment of Minnie Ripperton’s “Loving You” amongst a plethora of other field recordings strewn liberally throughout. It’s an entirely fitting way to end the album, and its trancelike qualities hypnotise every time.
The extra disc in this particular set was destined to become essential by virtue of the wealth of great additional mixes and material available from this particular era. A few months after the release of Adventures…, Wau! Mr. Modo released a special, limited edition remix album entitled “Aubrey mixes: the ultraworld excursions” that included mixes of most of the tracks from Adventures…, collating them into a new, seamless experience. This album achieved an almost mythical status as it was deleted on the day of release to ensure that it remained “limited.” Interestingly, and perhaps wisely, the majority of the material on this extra disc is taken from this remix album, the few remaining tracks (bar the very strange “January Mix” of “Perpetual Dawn”) not included here were made available as an additional fourth “disc” as part of an iTunes exclusive bundle.
“Aubrey Mixes…” also happens to be a very good album in its own right, featuring a number of excellent remixes, some of which are arguably better than the original. What is particularly pleasing (and surprising giving its length) is the inclusion of the Peel Session version of “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain….” A sort of hybrid of the “live” mixes and the dance mix that appeared on the second 12″ and “compactdisco” versions of the single, this has to be their finest Peel Session and one of the best versions of the track itself.
“Under water deep space” has somewhat peculiarly been credited as a remix of “back side of the moon” rather than “supernova at the end of the universe” which it bears a much greater similarity to. This remix by Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy combines all the finest elements of both of those tracks with a hefty dose of Hillage’s glissando guitar and a much more insistent and weighty groove to create a track that is perhaps closer to early System 7 than the Orb, and this distilled and reduced version works superbly.
I don’t really understand why they put the “Aubrey mix, Mk 11” version of “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain…” on here, however. Aside from its rarity, it’s little more than a concise edit of other versions and contains little that is new or interesting. The spot would have been better occupied by something else – a mix of Perpetual Dawn for example. Its inclusion seems to have hinged on the fact that if flows directly on from the “Fountains of Elisha” mix of “Outlands,” a remix that has remained one of my favourites. The extra disc is closed out with the incorrectly named “Spanish Castles in Space (Castles in Goa Mix)”. This is actually the longer and much more interesting “Extended Youth Mix” of the track that also concluded the “Aubrey mixes” disc. A more conventional bassline and eastern beats and effects are added to this up-tempo version by Youth, probably one of the most radical remixes on the album.
The remastering seems to have done wonders for Adventures…, and I’m quite sure it’s never sounded this good on CD before. As fond as I still am of my original classical LP pressing, this re-issue delivers a far superior level of detail and clarity, in particular on “Little Fluffy Clouds,” which always sounded rather murky previously. Perhaps the one point at which things have gone a little too far is on “Back side of the moon” which seems a tad bright – the shards of gleaming crystal that pierce the deep space every so often are just a little too sharp.
All in all, this is one of the best of the re-issue packages and it’s almost a pity that it wasn’t issued as a four-disc set, since then we would have had wonderful remasters of the comparatively rare (on CD) Ultrabass I version of “Perpetual Dawn,” the remainder of the Peel Sessions (including the hilarious organ rendition of “I do like to be beside the sea-side” at the end of “Into the Fourth Dimension”) and also the odd version of Little Fluffy Clouds too (I’ve never liked Pal Joey’s “cumulo nimbus” mix). This piece of ambient history gets the highest recommendation.
Next time, I invite you to join me as I go u.f.orb spotting.
The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld is out now. [Purchase
