The Orb are an English electronic music group founded in 1988 by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty.
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29 Facts About The Orb
2.
The Orb have maintained their signature science fiction aesthetic despite numerous personnel changes, including the departure of Cauty and members Kris Weston, Andy Falconer, Simon Phillips, Nick Burton, and Andy Hughes.
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3.
The following year, the Orb released the Kiss EP, a four-track EP based on samples from New York City's KISS FM.
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4.
The Orb's performances became most popular among weary DJs and clubbers seeking solace from the loud, rhythmic music of the dancefloor.
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5.
The Orb built up melodies using multitrack recordings linked to multiple record decks and a mixer.
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6.
For its release as a single on the record label Big Life, the Orb changed the title to "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld".
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7.
Soon thereafter, the Orb were commissioned by Dave Stewart to remix his top-20 single "Lily Was Here".
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8.
When offered an album deal by Big Life, the Orb found themselves at a crossroads: Cauty preferred that the Orb release their music through his KLF Communications label, whereas Paterson wanted to ensure that the group did not become a side-project of Cauty and Bill Drummond's KLF.
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10.
The Orb promoted this single with a "legendary avant-garde" performance on Top of the Pops where Patterson and Weston played a game of chess in space suits while footage of dolphins and an edited version of "Blue Room" ran in the background.
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11.
In July 1992, U F Orb was released featuring "Blue Room" and, in the US release, the Orb's next single, "Assassin".
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12.
Also in the summer of 1994 The Orb provided music for The Jupiter Collision, the BBC's brief info series about the Shoemaker-Levy comet.
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13.
Paterson felt that this new direction of songwriting for the Orb was more similar to the experimental work of Orbus Terrarum than to the techno-pop of Orblivion.
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14.
The Orb were generally regarded by the British press as past their prime and an "ambient dinosaur" out of place in the current dance music environment.
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15.
The Orb, now composed of Paterson, Phillips, and Fehlmann, with guest John Roome, accepted an invitation to join the Area:One concert tour with Moby, Paul Oakenfold, New Order and other alternative and electronic artists.
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16.
The Orb left Island Records and released the album on Cooking Vinyl and Sanctuary Records.
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17.
The Orb brought in jazz and house music singer Juliet Roberts and guitarist Steve Hillage.
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18.
The Orb released the Metallic Spheres album in October 2010, featuring David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
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19.
In 2013, the Orb performed with the Kakatsisi drummers of Ghana on the West Holts stage at Glastonbury Festival.
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20.
On 22 June 2018, The Orb released their fifteenth studio album, No Sounds Are Out of Bounds.
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21.
The Orb released their sixteenth studio album, Abolition of the Royal Familia, on 27 March 2020.
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22.
The Orb's members have drawn from an assortment of influences in their music.
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23.
The earliest ambient influences of the Orb came in 1979 during Paterson's roadie days with Killing Joke.
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24.
The Orb have often been described as "The Pink Floyd of the Nineties", but Paterson has stated that their music is more influenced by experimental electronic music than progressive rock of the 1970s.
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25.
The Orb has noted though that the Pink Floyd album Meddle was influential to him as a child in the 1970s.
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26.
The Orb began performing regularly at the Brixton Academy in the early 1990s, where they used the high ceilings and large space for their "well-suited amorphous sound", frequently performing their newest and more experimental pieces there.
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27.
The Orb used ADAT recorders for performances from 1993 to 2001 and utilised large 48-track decks, which Paterson described as being a "studio onstage".
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28.
The Orb have used a wide variety of audio clips from sources ranging from McCarthy era speeches to prank phone calls by Victor Lewis-Smith to David Thewlis' apocalypse-driven rant from the film Naked.
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29.
The Orb has been a prolific remixing team, having completed over 80 commissioned remixes since 1989.
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