Send "The Orb " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 The Orb's new-millennium output has varied so wildly, quality-wise, that there's become a sense that a "good" new Orb album is mostly down to whoever has control of the mixing desk this time out. On the one hand, this seems unfair to me, because it always sounds like there's some guilt driving the grudging praise that needs to be alleviated by claiming the new guy in the creative mix is responsible for the much-needed shot-in-the-arm/aesthetic steadying. Not that, say, Thomas Fehlmann is some spring chicken, but you know what I mean.On the other, I can't deny that the Orb's 21st-century discography is pretty inconsistent, both as a body of work and on an album-by-album basis. With that in mind, I listened to the new Orb album, Baghdad Batteries: Orbsessions Vol. III, completely blind. No idea whose hands/brains were responsible for which track. And it's solid enough: entertaining if rarely revelatory, which probably isn't a reasonable expectation anyway, and dangerously stuck between multiple either/ors-- uptempo and downtempo, retro and innovation. And so the Orb go casting around for proven hits. For the most part, the album keeps from slumping into the kind of pleasantly familiar bulletin from a long-running act, the kind of late-career album that gets shelved after three months in favor of the older, better stuff. Baghdad's sure hand with the mid-tempo isn't surprising, as the Orb helped invent the rave middle-ground, but unfortunately whimsy and personality can add only so much to Xeroxes. Baghdad recycles recent rave history so frequently that it's got to lean very hard on the Orb's way with beautiful textures to keep listeners from shrugging, sighing, and pulling out the originals....full text |
| Regator |
| Brooklyn Vegan (6 months ago) photos by Carl Johnson The Orb @ Coachella 2009 "Four men/[The Orb] took the stage and though I couldn't tell you who was what, I could tell exactly who was Alex Paterson (essentially the one man Orb)....full text |
| Guardian |
| It's been nearly two decades since the Orb released Little Fluffy Clouds, a seminal piece of ambient electronica that helped bring chill-out music into being. Some have still not forgiven Dr Alex Paterson for this, but his latest album finds the sound his group pioneered once again respectable. The third in a series that has previously scooped together studio oddities, Baghdad Batteries is entirely new material that shares many characteristics with the minimal techno popularised by labels such as Kompakt. That's no bad thing, and there is a richness to the music that shows Paterson has not been left behind by advances in production. While techniques can be learned, however, it's Paterson's skill for serendipity that makes this album interesting. As tracks bleed into one another, Batteries becomes a mystery tour through an aural museum: in one room you find the familiar dubby bass, the next a modern, glitchy synth hook, the third a looped cat's purr....full text |
The Orb lyrics
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