Customer Reviews
I'm actually on TV - By: Mr. A. Pomeroy, 12 Jul 2005 
Mine still has the 'Brit Awards Nominee' sticker on the front. I believe this got to number onein the charts, which was dead unprecedented for what was mostly a lot of multi-layered samples with some beats here & there. For some reason it all worked; I have heard bootlegs of the early sessions which led to this album, & there's no magicin the demos. The Orb's later albums were conceptually similar but uniformly rubbish. But U.F.Orb, whether because the band was going the extra mile, or because of some ineffable fairy dust, U.F.Orb actually worked, it was relaxing, funny, mesmerising, an excellent listen with headphones, as background music, & loudly to dance toin the bits which have beats. The samples are all well-chosen & I can still recite most of them; the bit where there is a snippet from Radio Moscow, followed by loud drums, is the best. The second side of the album is noticeably moodier, with 'Close Encounters' sounding as you would expect a song about UFOs to sound.
It's also a nostalgic album, for peoplein their early 30s. The pre-internet 'Wired'-era computer whizz-bang space-age techno-pagan futurism of it all was mirroredin contemporary releases by the Future Sound of London, System 7 & so forth, & although this kind of ambient space music is now as dated as krautrock wasin 1992, it's heartbreaking to listen to. So many dreams & hopes smashed to bits.
Excellent way to show off a hi-fi system, too, because it has quiet bits & loud bits & they all sound top-notch. 'Sticky End' is a short joke track & '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.
The sound of an epoch - By: C. Quinn, 19 May 2005 This is a condensed version of the original triple vinyl release of 'U.F.Orb', which came 'hermetically sealed'in blue-grey PVC & had to be cut open with knife or scissors - a typically elaborate Paterson/Cauty marketing gimmick that also seemed to say something about how they viewed The Orb as a cultural project. It was as if 'U.F.Orb' was a time capsule, a distillation of the sprawling experiments on 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld', a sealed container flung into space to show the rest of the universe what it was like on Earth (or at leastin Britain)in 1992.
As a summation of a pointin 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 & dub from Jamaica, & stretched & warped them into a completely new form. If the clubs were full of house & techno, the bedrooms were full of smoke & ambient dub, & 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 & more dubby, with more going on but less dependence on the BBC sound effects records & slowed-down house beats that were the backbone of their earlier work. 'Blue Room' (here edited from its 39'58" single length) & 'Towers of Dub' are the standouts, but The Orb's legacy is even more impressive than their music. You can hear it not onlyin experimental 'dance' music from Shpongle to Monolake, from Portishead to Lemon Jelly; it's embeddedin mainstream pop, soundtracks & muzak the world over. And if you still have that triple vinyl release, with the PVC intact, I bet it's worth a fortune.
I dont like dance music but I love this! - By: Jean Bradbury, 30 Aug 2003 I'll be straight, dance is'nt my usual taste. I love rock & indie & my limited ventures into dance have been Progidy, Underworld (the dark hardcore stuff) & the poppy KLF. This is the only other dance album I own but I love it.
This album is beautiful. Ambient soundscapes & sampled effects sweep over you & help you relax. Its easiest for me to compare this to Dark Side Of The Moon or Kid A/OK Computer era Radiohead so I will.
This album shares the same sort of forward vision as those albums &in the same way that those albums are very ambitious & complex this is too. This is where the greatest music comes from & also where the biggest failings come from, when artists try to be ambitious. Fortunately Alex has the talent to make it work.
The album should not be listened to as tracks, it should be listened to as one long experience. The album take different styles such as dub & mixes it with a sort of prototype of trip hop. When voices comein they aid the flow of music rather than lock the music down. The album works because none of the individual factorsin it take over, they all work together.
I suppose that because Jimmy Cauty of the KLF founded the Orb with Patterson (and left before this recording), & because when this was recorded ambient dance had'nt progressed as far as it would, this & all of the Orb's recordsin the first few years will be compare with the KLF's Chillout album. True, both this album & Chillout are classics but they are very different. This Orb album is very influenced by Jamaican Dub, Darkside era Pink Floyd soundscapes & at times very trippy sounds. Chillout may sound a bit basic compared to this but then again, Chillout was the first true ambient dance album.
If you only ever buy one dance album buy this. Alex has extraordinary musical vision & the talent to make it work. Granted, according to all of the reviews I've read the Orb never matched this again. So what, Guns N Roses were crap for a long time but at least they gave us the Appetite For Destruction album.
Utterly baffling - By: filterite, 02 May 2001 Great tunes for you to lay back & relax to . Love this & you're in for a spaced out trip .
The kings of ambient sleepwalk to peak form - By: , 27 Jan 2001 From the swirling, outer-space beauty of O.O.B.E. to the simply stunning & very long Blue Room & Towers of Dub, this is the Orb's most assured & most melodic album, with evidence of the weird sound effects & dialogue voiceovers to comein their very good 1997 album Orblivion, although this one is far more memorable probably due to more recognizable tunes & stunning house beats that render any kind of modern dance music anaemic. Stunning!
