Spin volume 12, #7, oct 96
edit"Drums & Wires" by Charles Aaron, p. 69 (only the relevant bit).
"Heady shit, particularly at 2:30 A.M., but the Orb's Alex Paterson had no intention of easing up. A '90s skeptic with a fat spliff in his and, Paterson, 36, has earned a reputation as rave's benign anti-guru, prankiishly stretching techno's boundaries - linking '60s psychedelia with '70s art rock and jamaican dub to create ambience with biite and wit. The Orb live (Paterson and partner Andy Hughes) was another, not-so-fluffy world entirely. Bass ghosts lumbered across the mountainside, as a lonely steel gutar kidnapped from Eno's Apollo album wafted woozily. Two monstrous screens on either side of the stage matched deathly illustrations (Charles Burns-like cartoons of bodies skinned alive, a skeleton leaning over a desk, head in hands) with footagge of trained elephants, marionettes, and circus clowns. Ren & Stimpy tapped us on the shoulder and exhorted loudly "You're not happy enough!" Suddenly, the Orb's chill-out room became a cozy morgue with a laugh track.
Orb Interview 1995
editKeyboard (june 1995) Alex Paterson/The Orb - Inside the Ambient Techno Ultraworld by Robert L. Doerschuk
If music is a response to the temper of our times, then the Orb
is exactly what America needs. Things are getting a little too
cut-and-dried here: Complex problems beget weirdly simple
solutions -- kicking people out of the country, putting them in
institutions, shutting down institutions, or just saying no.
As the guiding force of the group known as the Orb, Alex Paterson sees things differently. His music is all blur and fuzz. Scraps of sound fade in and out, drifting over fields unbound by the barbed wire of verse and chorus. There's rhythm, and it's as regular as anything on the prosaic dance charts. But so are heartbeats regular, though life swirls through and around them with beguiling imprecision.
Shapes are hard to identify in Paterson's world. Voices fly about, sometimes as sharp and intrusive as a mosquito's whine, more often muffled and unintelligible; someone is talking, but we can't quite make it out. Occasionally the aural clouds lift and we hear something more clearly -- something ugly or scary, a snake-handler's snarl, or fragile, a child's tale. We hold our breaths and listen, afraid of losing this picture of innocence as it sinks into a sea of reverb, the sound of a dream dissolved by the light of awakening.
There's a lot more going on here than ambience. Many of the artists tagged with the ambient label update the ideas pioneered by Brian Eno and, especially, Harold Budd. Through space and suggestion, they define a style that celebrates inertia, or even creates almost a sense of paralysis before a moment of beautiful oblivion. But there's an optimistic tinge to the Orb. It surfaces in the organ motif from "His Immortal Logness" on *Pomme Fritz*, a simple, roller-rinkish tune that seems drawn from some half-remembered childhood scene. It blossoms in synth parts that fan out over teeming noise pastiches. Even the prickly staccato synth and rhythm interludes in the *Live 93* version of "Blue Room" is more tickle than sting.
Then there's *Orbus Terrarum*, the latest Orb exercise. As noted in last month's review, Paterson combines a vivid timbral ear and improvisational sense to create an album of great organic power. One could imagine its pulses, spacey reveries, and fragmented monologs as a kind of interior soundtrack, a score for a ballet of brain and biology -- an almost uniquely human document.
Not much of Paterson's style draws from pre-punk rock or the familiar electronic icons. Its energy is a streamlined variation on the ambient dance discs he spun as a DJ at Paul Oekenfold's club, Land of Oz. Its sense of movement stems from his experience as roadie and occasional performer with Killing Joke in late '79; the slow, unfolding pace owes much to Paterson's experience as an A&R staffer for Eno's E.G. label, beginning in the spring of '88.
In those days Paterson was working closely with Jimi Cauty, whose music was being published by E.G. Together they launched the Orb catalog in the summer of '88 with "Tripping on Sunshine," an experimental piece intended for use on ex- Killing Joke bassist Youth's *Eternity Project One* album. Other releases followed: They pressed and quickly sold 1,000 copies of a four-song EP built around samples recorded in 1981 from broadcasts of KISS radio in New York. In the spring of '89 they unleashed "A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld," a haunting meditation on a sample taken from the late Minnie Ripperton's "Loving You."
Several months later, Paterson and Youth collaborated on "Little Fluffy Clouds." With its thumping beat and spaghetti- western harmonica hook, it hit the charts hard. After Cauty left to work full-time with KLF, Thrash became Paterson's partner and helped lay the groundwork for the group's live debut in April '91.
Since then, the Orb has performed throughout the world, on occasion as post-punk quartet covering the Stooges' "No Fun" but often in more ambitious settings. From Glastonbury Plain to pre-dawn sets at Woodstock II, Paterson and assorted colleagues excel at live remixes that embrace and absorb the natural world into which they are released. After an Orb marathon, it doesn't really matter whether the crickets you're hearing are real, sampled, or in some strange place between.
We met with Paterson in L.A. Thrash had recently departed the Orb, leaving Paterson in charge. He was putting a new lineup together, with plans to tour the U.K. from March 15 into April, with European dates following in May, American club gigs in June, Japan in July, and more concerts in Europe after that. As we spoke, the group consisted of Nick Burton, Simon Phillips, co-writer and producer Thomas Felhmann, and Andy Hughes, engineer and, according to Paterson, designated sex symbol. We began by zeroing in on what American audiences can expect from this year's incarnation of the Orb.
- How does the Orb's approach to performing differ from the approach
taken by more traditional bands?***
Everything is already on DAT, basically. We have a multitrack onstage, because we try and take the feel of the band in the studio onto the stage, rather than go onstage with instruments to copy what you've already heard. Technology has given us the freedom to buy three DAT machines for the cost of a thousand pounds, so in essence we've got a three- or four-track studio up there.
- Will there be any instruments onstage?***
I might have my ARP 2600, because that's what we used for the bass part on "White River Junction" [from *Orbus Terrarum*]. It's been MIDIed.
- You'll have a rack of modules as well?***
A rack of effects, mainly. Andy's got his rack of effects, and I put my effects through whatever I want to do with two turntables, three cassette machines, two CD players, and a couple of DAT machines. That creates quite a racket.
- Effects seem to play a key role in how you improvise in
concert.***
Well, yeah. If you listen to an Orb record, there's never really an ending; it just leads to another record. You've got to change the DATs live, so if you just leave an effect running you can do that.
- You can do the same thing by using looped samples as
transitional elements.***
Right. "God wants to love and use you": That's an example we've been using recently in our shows. That's a pretty phenomenal vocal, and we just leave it running in a loop. I've got my own Akai S1100 in my mixing desk; DJs are a little more technical than they used to be when they were just playing two records. I've got two ten-second samples I can use through a digital delay any time I need to stop the record. When we first started doing shows, we used to use just a DAT machine. But when I'd play it onstage, people would say, "That sounds so different tonight. What track did you play that in?" And we'd be playing the same DAT every night! We'd just be changing effects.
- The DAT, then, would include the basic rhythms and
chords.***
In the old days, it would contain the whole track. In the new days, you can strip it all down to just the metronome. It depends on what you're trying to do. We're bringing real musicians into technology now, whereas we used to do it the other way 'round. The hardest thing we're doing right now is to get a bass player and a drummer who are open to what we're doing and can play in time with everything on the DAT. Simon and Nick seem to be having problems trying to understand what the hell is going on. It's easy enough with technology to move something in 7/8 over something else in 4/4. But to get humans to do that is difficult.
- Depending on the people you hire.***
But, look, I'm not *hiring* these people. They're my friends. We're going to tour, which means we're going to be living together for a year. You can't *hire* people for that. That ain't gonna work. They'd end up in their own tour coach, wanting loads of money and not getting on with other people. It's very difficult to stay friends with people when you're on tour.
- Traditional bands improvise through solos. When you've got
your DAT running onstage, how do you improvise?***
I'll take some effects out. The engineer on the other side of the stage brings other effects in. Chris [Weston, a.k.a. Thrash] used to do that as our engineer, but then he decided he didn't want to engineer anymore; he wanted to concentrate on doing the music with me. Chris got to the point where it was very much like, "Well, if you're doing that with the music, I don't like it. I want to be doing this, and *then* I'll like it." It was pretty sad. He's left the band now. Nick, Simon, and Andy, as a live band, are very strong. Nick and Simon have been touring with us since 1992, and Andy has been in the studio as an engineer with us since just after *U.F.Orb*. He was the engineer on
- FFWD* [available on the English label Inter]. He got himself
more and more involved. Then Chris wanted to become the engineer again, *and* be the songwriter, *and* not have anybody else involved. I told him, in no uncertain terms, "Get your own band together. Sort your own life out." So he left in early August. At the end of the day, Chris might feel a bit grieved about leaving the band, but it was his decision.
- What kind of a role did he play in Orb concerts?***
Well, he stopped doing them two years ago. He didn't want to go on the road. Andy just got gradually involved, and a bit of antagonism was going on. So when Chris finally left, Andy just stepped into his shoes.
- What qualities does your current co-producer and co-writer,
Thomas Fehlmann, have that let him play a major role in your creative process?***
He's a very dear friend. And he's got the same idea that I have, that music isn't just something to dispose of. We don't want to make disposable records. We're fed up with them. You pick up a Led Zeppelin record, you know exactly what you're gonna get. It's gonna be the same kind of integrity we'd like to have in putting the message across on an Orb record. We may have achieved that on the new album. At least we gave it our best shot. But I think that, like a Led Zeppelin album, it sits on its own. The difference is that you kind of know what's going to happen on a Led Zeppelin record; on an Orb record, you don't. You hear something in one speaker, then you walk to another speaker in another corner of the room and it sounds completely different. But you don't know that until you get over to that speaker and listen to it three times. So it's really nothing like a Led Zeppelin record, except in that I've got to have some kind of focus to make it not just, "Oh, I'll listen to that album and forget about it."
- Some of the strong beats on earlier Orb albums seem to
reflect your punk roots. How did you evolve from that background to the position you assign to rhythm in your music today?***
I'll mention one band: Can. That's the easiest way to answer. He [i.e., Holger Czukay] changed my way of thinking in the sense of what he was up to. I admit I was a very late learner of Can ways. They were always hidden under the perception that Kraftwerk started up. Kraftwerk was an amazing band too, which leads me to the whole German feel of music in the early '70s. I mean, Stockhausen brings out the non-rhythm side of the music, but that same quality is still there. I sat down one night with Richard James, played some Stockhausen, and talked about it for half an hour.
- Which Stockhausen piece was it?***
The one that was made in 1959. I'm quite attracted to it because of the fact that it was made the year I was born.
- Your rhythm tracks create an almost ethnic feel, often
through intricate patterns that avoid emphasizing the backbeat.***
That's true of the new album, but we've done music where it's much more obvious where that bass drum is gonna come down.
- How do you get that organic quality in your rhythm
parts?***
That's from putting the noises through any outboard effect we might have handy. That makes them sound completely different. A bird noise can be turned into a cuckoo clock, as an example. We don't always do that kind of thing deliberately, but on *FFWD* we did -- so deliberately that we called the track "What Time Is Clock"? We'll take raindrops and use them too. There was a hole in the roof of our studio, and every day it would rain. Every day we'd have to take all the gear out, then put it back in when the rain stopped and carry on recording. One night we decided to record all the raindrops. That turned into a rhythm pattern.
- When did you begin exploring beyond the ambient idea?***
I was working with Jimi. We'd spent the weekend before programming these really shit drum sounds. I was rapidly going off the idea of using drums because I wanted to create a music you could play *after* the clubs, music that was modern but that you didn't have to dance to. The only way you could stop people from dancing was to take the bloody drums away. That night I went out to an amazing club or party, call it what you want, in a big tent near the sea. I ended up on the beach the next afternoon. Then Jimi and I went back and did "Loving You" [the Minnie Ripperton vocal sample used in "A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain . . .," from *Aubrey Mixes* and
- Adventures beyond the Ultraworld*]. I was so chilled out by
the fact that we'd spent the afternoon by the sea after doing this club all night that it was like, "We can take these drums out!" The ambient noises in there created the environment where we'd been that morning.
- Before launching the Orb, your involvement with music
technology was minimal. You were a drum tech, for example, with Killing Joke.***
It's easy enough to say I was just a drum tech, but actually I was the only roadie they had. I ended up with the drums because that's what I enjoyed most: tuning drums, playing around with drums, annoying people with drums. Still do. Besides, we were the first band ever to use [Clavia] ddrums. I was the first roadie who ever tried to put ddrums into a live kit, because the drummer looked like an idiot playing the stupid electronic stuff. He wanted them to look like the sound was coming out of a regular drum kit, which really pissed me off. I wasn't a bloody carpenter. Still, [Killing Joke drummer] Paul was very open to hearing me. If I wasn't getting the bass drum in time, he'd still hear what I was trying to do. When you listen to Can, you can hear what he was trying to do: loops that you can do in a computer now.
- Do you see what the Orb is doing as a bridge between, say,
Stockhausen and more accessible styles?***
I know exactly what you mean, but if somebody reading this says, "Oh, I've got to buy that Stockhausen record because it must be really good," they're gonna get a cruel awakening.
- But you have no problem combining radically disparate
influences in your music?***
That's right. It's like being a painter. You see something that you want to put in a picture. It becomes a collage rather than just a painting. Americans are very good at doing these things through society, picking up bits from Europe, from South America, from here and there. That's what we're doing at the musical level. I mean, I had the first Led Zeppelin album coming into my head when I was eight years old. So I've always thought, "I like John Bonham, I like Sly Dunbar, and I like Brian Eno. I wonder what that all sounds like together?" That's what the Orb is, even today.
- Did you ever go through a period of playing real-time music
in bands?***
No, but I've always been surrounded by music. I had what I regard as a musical home. My brother was a really good musician. [Producer/Killing Joke bassist] Youth and I grew up together. We went to school together, shared flats until about four years ago. He was trying to teach me to , these two fingers still have their own minds. Forget it: If I'm playing keyboards, it's with my thumbs and index fingers. That's peculiar, but it's just one of those things.
- So sequencers and related developments in technology must
have been the catalysts that let you begin making music as the Orb.***
Well, to be honest about it, the Orb at first was basically about taking lots of drugs and going clubbing. I had been trying to run my own label with Youth, but people were telling me that since I was also working in the A&R department at E.G. I should be more involved with the label that was paying me. Then Jimi and I decided that we should get a band together. I saw that as my lifeline because Jimi had a 16-track studio and his publishing company was E.G. So the people at E.G. said, "We'll turn a blind eye to you working with Jimi because if you come up with anything successful we'll publish it." They also turned a blind eye to me running a company with Youth, because Youth was signed to E.G. Publishing as well. So those were the breaks that took me into the realm of making music. The technology had been there, but I was a late developer.
- How did sampling affect your work?***
It really gave me my main purpose with the Orb: What can we do with this sample? What effect can we put into it? How can we hide the saxophone from *Blade Runner* and put that into a track that went into the Top 20 in Britain without anybody recognizing it? There's a kind of beauty, a kind of cleverness, in that: People will go, "What did I just hear? That ain't in there!" But it is! It's like taking the drums in "Little Fluffy Clouds" from a drum break that went on for about three minutes on an album by a very important singer who died recently. No one would even think of going into that type of music to find it in the first place.
- You rely a lot on spoken word samples to set moods and
provide segues, though they're often mixed down to the point of inaudibility.***
That's true, although we didn't do that on the first album [*Adventures beyond the Ultraworld*], which was three weeks of hard work: Get the album out and keep it under budget. The new album is two years of blood, sweat, tears, and loads of money -- more money than I ever would have imagined I could possibly get my hands on when I was younger. And getting the words in the right places.
- Where did that money go on this album that made it
different from less lavishly funded Orb projects?***
Into our manager's pocket. Let's put it that way.
- Have you got a better manager now?***
I've got a caretaker manager, a close friend.
- How did you begin thinking of spoken word samples as
devices that could enhance your music?***
Intuition. That's the only way I can put it. You've got to have some humor on these records, and words can put a smile on people's faces. In essence, I'm doing what a lot of journalists -- dare I say? -- want to do, and that's to take the piss out of somebody. For example, "Spanish Castles in Space" [from
- Aubrey Mixes*] has a sample I took from an album in Russian.
This bloke was talking about what kinds of fishes he had in his fish tank. You can imagine the reaction this will get when you play it in Russia.
- Where do you find your speech samples?***
Mainly from the lovely TV and radio networks you've got here in this lovely country. I record two hours of DAT while sitting up in a hotel room, bored. Then I'll go home, put it in a sampler, and find the nice ones. It could be two hours of crap, but sometimes I'll find something great. Remember that sample on "Little Fluffy Clouds" -- something about a morphine drip in someone's stomach? That comes from a religious program. That's just an example of this society you live in; we wouldn't have some evangelist punching somebody in the stomach and yelling, "See? No pain! No pain!" Pow!
- Fundamenalist religious diatribes are familiar material for
samples these days.***
Yeah, but we got in trouble once for using something from the Koran. We were using samples of passages from the Koran on one tour, and we were told, "If you don't stop, we're gonna declare a fatwah and destroy every gig you play." In fact, when we were playing this record onstage in Brighton, these guys started trying to strangle our tour manager. I was putting the Koran over the top of, I think, "Outlands" when this message came up on my mixer: "Take the Arab record off. Now!" I thought someone was joking. Then I saw these three Arabs holding my tour manager up in the air and screaming at him.
- What about bird chirps and other real-world samples? Do
you get many of them from third-party sources?***
I used to. Not now. It's an excuse to get away.
- So if we hear a train on an Orb record, it's not taken from a
sound effects CD?***
Certainly not trains. There's a very big train line just 300 yards from my house. At about three in the morning this huge train comes running through, so there's this really low rumble going on. One night I left a DAT on outside my bedroom and got it on tape. It's also got the sound of some kids talking about whatever they could possibly think up. I have all of it on this two- or three-hour DAT, and I play it live at gigs.
- What purpose does Orb music serve? Is it entertainment? Is
it a kind of commentary on our world?***
It's just something to chill out with at the end of the day. It's nice to know that people can cuddle up, kiss each other, and make themselves at home listening to the Orb. It's not like, "Right, I'm gonna get into the Orb and go for it tonight!" It's a much more personal experience than that.
- In that sense, do you see the Orb as playing a major role in
defining ambient music?***
Look, we're not making ourselves to be the "guardians of ambience." We're not throwing down this gauntlet and saying we're the best band in the world. We're just doing our own thing and creating what we want to create. I like to think there's someone out there making music in the '90s that I can enjoy, just like I enjoyed sitting at home and having a listen to Can records. But if there isn't, I'll do that music myself.
Rollingstone Live Review 97
editRolling Stone review of the Hammerstein Ballroom, NY, live show in May 97
The Orb
Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, May 9, 1997 [ May 16, 1997 issue? ]
When the Orb appeared in New York in 1995, they attracted a fairly uniform audience of young ravers with a few New Age types mixed in. Just two years later, with electronic music snaking into the mainstream, the group attracted a diverse crowd of fashion designers, Web-page producers, newlyweds from Queens and even a drag queen or two.
But if the Orb has gotten bigger, they certainly haven't become stars. Though founder Alex Paterson and partner in crime Andy Hughes are revered by many ambient musicians and are probably among the most recognizable electronica artists because of it, they preferred to act as behind-the-scenes mixmasters, bopping their heads as they orchestrated effects and sounds from behind banks of machines.
With a level of sensory overload that evoked Pink Floyd, a constant stream of psychedelic images was projected onto the screens about the stage, including morphing faces, ubiquitous alien references, Bela Lugosi, panda bears and a red chair flying through a futuristic cityscape. Musically, the beat-driven soundscapes were interlaced with a frenetic procession of quirky musical details and punctuated by ambient pauses, as though to pace the level of absorption. At one point, mellow dub hooks transformed into watery splishes; seconds later, the room was filled with chattering electronic birds.
Paterson and Hughes also dropped in various snippets of speech, from bits of conversation, to weather reports, to a hilarious poem by a man with an English accent about his regret at not being Italian. Also mixed in throughout were what sounded like McCarthy-era speeches declaiming the sanctity of God and country. Layered amid music without a fixed narrative and offered up to an audience to whom that time is ancient history, it amounted to an odd nostalgia for a fixed world order, as well as a cool acknowledgment that such order is now impossible.
While the sensory onslaught of an Orb performance practically forces a fairly passive relationship to onstage events, the opening DJ duo, We, gave concert-goers the sonic space to interpret sounds for themselves. With a sweet but gritty sound that seemed to get into people's bones, We's music was at once primal and futuristic, embryonic and worldly. Although the group, which consists of DJ Olive and DJ Loop, usually performs in smaller venues, they managed to retain the intimate quality that makes their occasionally jackhammer-like sounds somehow transmit a grinding warmth.
Phoenix Times 97 Interview
editPhoenix New Times April 24 - 30, 1997
Eye of the Orb Picking the “ever growing pulsating brain” of Alex Paterson, don of ambient By David Holthouse
Several London dance clubs can lay claim to the title “England [and therefore the world]’s First Underground House Music Club.” But only one--a South London spot called Heaven--has clear bragging rights to “England [and therefore the world]’s First Chill-Out Room.” It also can lay claim to helping bring about the ambient house of Alex Paterson, founding member of Orb, which is scheduled to hit the Valley this week.
It was 1989, and Heaven’s owner, Paul Oakenfold, flashed on the idea of providing overheated dancers a separate space to relax and come down off MDMA trips during the club’s weekly acid-house club night. He hired then London DJ Alex Paterson to provide atmosphere. Paterson, an A&R man for Brian Eno’s label EG and part-time roadie for the gothic industrial band Killing Joke, was then pioneering a new form of beatless, aural-collage music, similar on the surface to New Age relaxation tapes but with far more intricate and intelligent structures. Thus, Heaven’s chill-out zone was the delivery room for ambient house, and Paterson was the wizard behind the curtain.
Eight years later, with electronica breaking open the pop landscape like an earthquake fissure, Paterson is on tour in support of his ambient group Orb’s seventh album, Orblivion.
Orb has incrementally defined and then expanded the boundaries of ambient house since its landmark 1989 album A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Center of the Ultraworld. Despite that pretentious mouthful of a title, Brain is a gorgeous piece of graffiti where jet noises, church bells, choral parts and myriad other samples play like seals in and over waves of synthesizer. One memorable review labeled the album “virtual drugs.”
Orb launched its first U.S. tour in Phoenix with a show at Silver Dollar Club. Now Paterson and his Orb accomplice Andy Hughes, who replaced Kris “Thrash” Weston in 1995 after a nasty split, are scheduled to return to the Valley Wednesday, April 30. New Times spoke with Paterson recently about his Phoenix debut, the rummy rave scene in Puerto Rico, and why Americans are not very good with their feet.
New Times: What do you remember about your first U.S. show, at Silver Dollar? Orb has incrementally defined and then expanded the boundaries of ambient house since its landmark 1989 album.
Alex Paterson: Just that it was quite weird. It was in November of 1991. No, it must have been October of 1991--that’s when Halloween is, right?--because everyone was dressed up in all manner of elaborate costumes. And we had this Blues Brothers sort of thing where there was wire mesh all across the front of the stage, except instead of protecting us from country-music fans throwing beer bottles--which might have been interesting, really, as long as we were protected--it was the end of a barricade to separate the 21s from the under-21s. It sort of ran the length of the club and wound up in this big wall in front of us. And so, from the stage, you couldn’t really make head nor tail of what the fuck was going on out there, except there were all these people dressed up. Oh--I do remember there were all these lovely cheerleader girls running about. That’s what sticks out in my mind, anyway. Wire mesh and cheerleaders. Not a bad combination, really, when you think of t he possibilities.
NT: On U.F.Orb, you sort of tacitly expressed a fascination with the idea of UFOs and alien visitation. The Southwest is ground zero for sightings and abductions. Do you really believe the aliens are coming?
AP: Well, I certainly hope they are. And I think they may well be. All this talk has been around a while, hasn’t it, and it doesn’t seem to be going away. It’s just getting stranger and more frequent. People may laugh at that, but I’m sure the idea that the Earth was round seemed just as ridiculous to people at the time. “Oh, the Earth isn’t flat, hey? And I suppose little gray men are coming to visit as well.” At the very least, I like the idea, because I think there’s a little alien in all of us, trying to get out.
Andy Hughes, in the background: I think yours is just stuck in your head, Alex.
AP: No, Andy, it’s in my stomach. Didn’t you see the cinema?
NT: You recently played in Puerto Rico. What’s the scene like there?
AP: Well, I didn’t perform as the Orb. I just played records. I played this little club by the sea, and the scene there is really grinding, you know. It’s heat-oriented, it’s about a tropical, sexy groove, and sexy men and sexy women, and just sex, sex, sex. Grinding. So I wound up playing a lot of hip-hop and slowed-down jungle. That’s what they’re into in Puerto Rico. That and rum. There’s a huge Bacardi distillery there. I didn’t know Puerto Rico was part of America until I got there and a couple of locals who took me around told me it’s an American commonwealth. They didn’t seem to care for that at all. I’d say the natives are getting resentful. Didn’t seem to care much for America or Americans.
NT: What do you think of Americans?
AP: Well, you’re all right for the most part, except you’re not very good with your feet. If you throw a ball to your average Americans, they’ll at least try to catch it, and usually they’ll manage to look pretty cool doing it. But kick a ball at one of them and they just go all funny.
NT: Well, we do have a few soccer players in this country.
AP: That was just generally speaking, mate. No offense, you know.
NT: Okay, what about the underground dance scene in America? What’s your opinion?
AP: Well--say you had an A-bomb, and you dropped it on New York City, L.A. and Chicago--
NT: One bomb?
AP: No, three bombs. One each for New York City, L.A. and Chicago. How much of the U.S. population would you take out? Just answer quick. I’m trying to prove a point.
NT: Probably about 15 percent.
AP: No, 6 percent. Point being, there’s a lot more of America beyond New York City, L.A. and Chicago, and there’s a lot more to the American scene than those cities. Which is brilliant. We play all over America, and people are into us everywhere. We only had one bad show on the last tour, and that was in a small town in the outs in the south of France. There was just no one there. And that doesn’t happen in America anymore, no matter where we play. It’s really starting to all come together and happen. We’re doing a lot of our dates on this tour with the Chemical Brothers, and, well, this is going to sound like some sort of snob story, but it’s true. I was down at my neighborhood grocery store in London just before we came over to start the tour, and I ran into Tom from the Chemical Brothers, and he said, “This is it, Alex. We’re going to conquer America.” They’re really into it, those two.
NT: What do you think of their new album?
AP: It’s all right. It’s a lot of fun, and probably a good introduction for people wanting to check out this stuff. But if you’ve been into it for a while, it’s just more of the same. I mean, they loop it up a lot, don’t they? The Chemical Brothers definitely love a loop.
NT: So what’s the secret to keeping techno and ambient fresh?
AP: It’s easy. Just don’t copy everyone else. Be a black sheep, not a white sheep. I mean, God, I am tired of hearing all the sounds a [Roland] DX7 makes. Say, here’s one for you--how is a DX7 like a clitoris?
NT: I have no idea.
AP: Every cunt’s got one.
Option 97 article
editOption, No. 77, Nov/Dec 1997
"Minimal Impact" by Kenny Berkowitz. Photos by Martyn Gallina-Jones. (about influence of Philip Glass & Steve Reich on younger music makers excerpt about The Orb...)
But for Reich, who hasn't had the same degree of commercial
success as Glass, there's always something left to prove. "It's boring
for somebody to do the same thing over and over again," he says. "My
hope as a composer is to make music that is just going to sweep you
away into some kind of very positive, ecstatic state."
That could also stand as a perfect description of the goals of the early rave scene. After growing up on a diet of Eno ("I was in awe of him") and Kraftwerk, the Orb's Alex Paterson came up with a strain of beat-driven ambient music, creating "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Center of the Ultraworld" out of ocean waves, church bells, and jet planes - all held together with the throbbing keyboard arpeggios of Philip Glass and gradually shifting rhythms of Steve Reich.
"I remember seeing Koyaanisqatsi six times in one evening," says Paterson, who was 23 when the 1983 movie was released. The film, neither fiction nor documentary, contrasts the rapid pace of modern life (via time-lapse photography) with the static grandeur of nature. Lacking dialog entirely, its imagery is driven solely by Glass's monumental score. "I couldn't put it down, had to watch it again and again and again," says Paterson. "All my mates went out to play. They thought I was quite mad. And I just stayed inside and watched it. And watched it, and watched it, and watched it, and watched it, and watched it."
Paterson is in New York for a quick gig at the dance club Carbon. It's unfortunately the kind of night where everything goes wrong, with lighting troubles, a crowd complaining about ticket prices and the promoter ranting, "I produced Madonna! I produced Madonna!" Recovering in his hotel room the next day, Paterson sounds tired. After seven albums, he's seen a whole generation of musicians come along after him. And just the day before, the Village Voice described the Orb as "an up and coming band that's already on its way down."
"I've seriously thought about packing it in this year. If you want to say we're on our way down - I mean, we've been going for nine years now," says Paterson. "To me, just to be around nine years, to be making a good, honest set of albums, I couldn't ask for a better life. We may have committed a little plagiarism here and there - but we haven't copied anyone too drastically."
His influences are as clear as 1991's breakthrough "Little Fluffy Clouds" - a piece that Reich recognizes as his own "Electric Counterpoint" - as they are in 1997's "Ubiquity," which Paterson calls "a rip-off, in a sense." There's the bubbling, pulsating, keyboard (Glass); the polyrhythms of drum and metronome (Reich); the steadily shifting synth textures (Eno). At 37, Paterson has been playing long enough to hear himself imitated by younger musicians, with prettier melodies and funkier beats creeping into electronica as the music shifts from underground democracy to big business.
"Way back in the '80s, we didn't expect anybody to know about us," says Paterson. "Basically, we were creating an atmosphere where people who could dance would come to our gigs. Now we're getting more people who aren't dancing - that's called success. I never set out to make loads of money out of this business. I set out to have a really good time, and I'm having a really good time. Really, we were just out for a bit of fun. And now it's become corporate fun.
Future N Music 98
editFuture Music N 75 autumn special issue october 1998
- There is a short LX interview about UFoff; the next album (the Other one !).
Q : There probably aren't that many people who see the Orb as a greatest hits band. Doesn't it make you feel like Dean Martin ? A : Dean Martin... yeah , kind of. The funny thing is that is's also 10 years of the Orb so it rounds things off very nicely. I will admit it was a bit funny looking back at all those songs.
Q : Did it make you feel like old-timers ? A : I think we've got a long way to go yet. There are still a lot of people I used to listen to 10 years ago who are still going now and still producing good music. Look at Derrick May. I was on a BBC documentary with Derrick May last year... that was a very proud moment for me.
Q : As Orb guv'n'or, do you have a particular personal 'greatest hit' ? A : Yes, but it's nothing to do with the album...ha, ha. No, let's be serious here, I wasn't looking for individual tracks, I just wanted to gather together a real mish-mash of songs. Once again, that meant the Orb fell foul of the stupid BPI rules. If you do a two-Cd album of 'greatest hits' the second CD has to be remixes. Don't ask me why. Most people would probably say that The Orb haven't got two CDs worth of hits anyway !
Q : Did that mean re-recording tracks ? A : Not re-recording exactly. We did a bit of, ahem, sonic tweaking here and there but that was about it. Obviously there were some tracks we had to mess with. I mean, it would have been ridiculous to include the 40-minute mix of Blue Room on there. That would have been a real con. For Assassin we had two 20-minute versions and we edited them down to one and a half minutes, crossfading between the two. One track on the album is only going to be 45 seconds long.
Q : Searching throught 10 years's worth of tapes and discs must have revealed plenty of previously unreleased Orb epics. A : We've never really worked like that. When we go into a studio it's usually because we're ready to put together a track and we spend our time working on that track. We don't suddenly shoot off in another direction for a couple of weeks. Having said that, we've just got our own writing room which has caused a slight shift in our working methods. It's funny..when you don't have to pay for studio time, it's a lot easier to mess around with ideas. Wonder why that is ?
Q : What sort of set-up have you got in this new writing room then ? A : I keep it very simple. I have two turntables... and a microphone...sorry, I have two turntables and two Vestax DJ mixers. One of the mixers is quite comprehensive. It has a built-in drum machine and built-in sampler. Basically that allows me to do live sampling. I recently found this album "Teach your parrots to Talk" and I had a lot of fun with that, I can tell you.
Q : Are you a gear-head ? A : No, not at all. I leave that to Andy. He's does all the programming, he's knows which sampler to buy, he's knows which wire goes in which hole. I'm more of a sample-head...I collect sounds.My only other piece of kit is a keyboard - I can't remember what model - with all my favorite sounds on and all the main samples for all the songs we're working on. That's all I need.
Q : There was a time, about 3 or 4 years ago, when it looked as if the Orb would never make its 10th anniversary. Thrash buggered off, the press hated you, the albums didn't sell... A : Thrash was under a lot of pressure and had to get out. The only thing keeping me going was that I wanted to prove everybody wrong. I had to search for that inner strength. The deal with Island Records helped. Suddenly we had all our eggs in one basket instead of bits of egg all over the place.
Q : Did the music suffer ? A : I think some of the bad feeling came out on Orbus Terrarum which the British press gave a good kicking. What was funny was that the Americans really picked up on the album. Rolling Stone made it their album of the month. They thought we'd reinvented music. That sort of paved the way for the Chemicals and the Prodigy. To be honest, we didn't want to do the whole big American experience. We were asked to play Madison Square Garden but we refused on principle.
Q : What principle ? A : That we'd have to support Depechemode.
Q : So how's the new Orb album going ? A : We're hard at work. I've got a feeling in my water about this new album. There's something definitely different happening. It's loads of different styles from drum n bass to African. And Classic. It's a bit difficult to describe but it's definitely not going to be typical Orb tunes.
Q: Any regrets over the last 10 years ? A: Regrets ? Naah ! I'm having a wonderful time. Just think, I could have stayed as Killing Joke's roadie for 10 years instead. Imagine having that chiselled on your headstone : "Testing, testing...one, two...testing, testing..."
NME 98 Interview
editNME, 10 October 1998. interview w/ LX Paterson. Questions by Piers Martin.
Q : What song describes you best ? A : 'Towers of dub' by us, because it has all the elements : ambient, dub, manicness and samples. And humour.
Q : What is heaven ? A : A path through hell.
Q : What is hell ? A : It's a place on earth. Where ? In one's soul. Heaven is in your soul as well; it depends on which path you want to make.
Q : What is your earliest memory ? A : Having a piece of silver paper being taken out of my nose with a pair of tweezers by my dad when I was about one.
Q : What is your greatest fear ? A : Fear.
Q : What is your all-time hero ? A : Colin Wilson. He writes books on fiction, fact, crime, sort of pre-X Files mysteries from the 60's. He's written my favorite book, The Philosopher's stone, which is about trepanning and using the brain to lever itself into different dimensions, as opposed to using drugs.
Q : What's the worst trouble you've been in ? A : A recent time was last week-end when I got arrested by the Spanish police in Vigo for being an Ecstasy dealer with a mobile phone on the beach the previous night. They picked me up in the middle of the gig. I was taken away for about 5 hours and then brought back after they got a lawyer in to sort it out. Otherwise I would've had to stay there all weekend. Thing is, I wasn't even on the beach, and yet thay said they'd seen me there.
Q : Who was the first love of your life ? A : Annette. We went out for nearly 6 years.
Q : What's your greatest talent ? A : At the minute, DJing. I like the instant gratification- if you're shit, the crowd'll let you know. But when they're happy, you're happy.
Q : Upon whom you most like to exact revenge ? Why ? How ? A : Unprintable. I'd get sued. But you know who you are.
Q : What's your most treasured possession ? A : My two terrapins. Fascinating creatures.
Q : What have you most regretted doing while drunk ? A : Swinging from balcony to balcony, 20 floors up somewhere in Spain. Or in Germany, when I set fire to a hotel door. I thought that would be the easiest way in.
Q : What can you cook ? A : Pastas, sauces - vegetarian food, really.
Q : What's the best piece of advice you've received ? A : It's all in the mind.
Q : Can you read music ? A : No.
Q : If you were invisible for a day, what would you do ? A : I'm reading a comic at the moment called The Invisibles, and in it there's a secret force of invisible people who go around protecting the good from evil on Earth. Maybe I'd become one of them.
Q : What are your final 3 wishes ? A : I'd have a big brandy, a spliff, and somewhere nice like Scotland to scatter my ashes. My fourth wish before that would be to be a DJ in a hotel foyer in outer space. It's just got to be done.
In this issue, you also have a great ad for UF OFF (Launch this week),
and a review about LFC promos.
"Limited edition worth storming Island HQ for it if your local specialist store can't assist. Pal Joey, Adam Freeland and One True Parker just about scrape by with their house, breakbeat and electronica versions, but New Yorker Danny Tenaglia embraces the unenviable task of revamping perhaps ambient's finest moment with monumental gusto, blasting it to the core of the stormy, narco-disco style which Manhattan clubbers have taken to calling K (aka the drug Ketamine) house on his 'Detour mix'."