U.F.Orb

It's also a nostalgic album, for people in their early 30s. The pre-internet 'Wired'-era computer whizz-bang space-age techno-pagan futurism of it all was mirrored in contemporary releases by the Future Sound of London, System 7 and so forth, and although this kind of ambient space music is now as dated as krautrock was in 1992, it's heartbreaking to listen to. So many dreams and hopes smashed to bits.

Excellent way to show off a hi-fi system, too, because it has quiet bits and loud bits and they all sound top-notch. 'Sticky End' is a short joke track and 'Majesty' is a bit irritating, but it's otherwise an excellent way to spend fifty minutes or so. Shame they didn't include the lengthy 'Blue Room' single as a pack-in or bonus track (it was basically the album version looped a couple of times, with a different bassline).

And it's "Teilhard de Chardin", it took me ages to find that out; he's the one who conceived of a third world, a world of objective contents of thoughts.

As a summation of a point in musical time, it's as evocative as 'Revolver' or 'Ziggy Stardust' or 'Sound Affects'. And like all of those, there's something ineffably British about the way The Orb took beats from Detroit, minimalist compositions from New York and dub from Jamaica, and stretched and warped them into a completely new form. If the clubs were full of house and techno, the bedrooms were full of smoke and ambient dub, and The Orb were responsible for much of it.

'U.F.Orb' is their finest achievement, proving that 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' wasn't a novelty record but the herald (along with The KLF's 'Chill Out') of a new genre. The sound here is both denser and more dubby, with more going on but less dependence on the BBC sound effects records and slowed-down house beats that were the backbone of their earlier work. 'Blue Room' (here edited from its 39'58" single length) and 'Towers of Dub' are the standouts, but The Orb's legacy is even more impressive than their music. You can hear it not only in experimental 'dance' music from Shpongle to Monolake, from Portishead to Lemon Jelly; it's embedded in mainstream pop, soundtracks and muzak the world over. And if you still have that triple vinyl release, with the PVC intact, I bet it's worth a fortune.