★★★★★
The Orb's bountiful back catalogue has already been cherry-picked for compilations focusing on their major-label output throughout the 90s. Here we join Alex Paterson and co in their nomadic years, principally touring around extracts from their post-millennial releases for labels such as Kompakt.
- recordcollectormag.com
2015-01-29
★★★★★
This four-disc compilation is a reminder of what major record labels are actually good at: bringing together a ton of content, both predictable and otherwise, to make a tasty, doorstop-sized thing that's worth spending money on because it would take forever to find the stuff on Spotify or whatever.
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-10-10
★★★★★
In today's beat-saturated world, it is too easy to forget just how radical dance music's pioneers were. Ambient and dub house collective The Orb, formed in the twilight years of the 1980s by visionary Alex Paterson, were as much informed by the 'rip it up and start again' ethos of punk as they were by the sounds emerging from Ibiza. Their early hits, such as 'A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain.....
- www.clashmusic.com
2013-10-07
★★★★★
Last year, legendary IDM duo The Orb teamed up with a different kind of dance music legend, Jamaican dub reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, to make The Orbserver In The Star House. Now, together, they release More Tales From The Orbservatory, additional tracks from the unlikely pair's recording session...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-07-12
★★★★★
The End Records Usually, if you referred to something as "more of the same," it would be with a shrug and an "Eh." But in the case of the latest collaboration between The Orb and dub god Lee "Scratch" Perry, "more of the same" is a resounding (and heavily echoed with a killer bass line underneath) two thumbs up. In short, if you enjoyed last fall's Orb/Perry outing,, The Orbserver In The Star House, then More Tales From The Orbservatory is a guaranteed smile smile smile...
- www.jambands.com
2013-06-12
★★★★★
On their 13th studio album, Dr Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlman craft a decent ambient-cum-dance music work with plenty of beats, burbling and wispy noises - much like their triumphs of old. Lee Perry's sometimes off-key ramblings, however, don't exactly enhance the mix. To be fair, Scratch sounds in better voice than he has on various live recordings of late, but his seven decades show in the quality and timbre of his vocals...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Last year's 'The Dream' saw The Orb revisit their poppier side, and it was arguably their best and most accessible album since their 90s heyday. 'Baghdad Batteries' sees them (this time 'them' being Dr Alex Paterson and the returning Thomas Fehlmann) swiftly returning to their more experimental side, though the subtle melodies and deftly deployed beats remain present and correct, on another electronica odyssey that feels at times more inner space than outer space...
- www.thecmuwebsite.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Once upon a time, in a distant galaxy, a vocal album was a rare thing. Arriving in Kingston in the early 1960s, Perry changed the shape of Jamaican popular music many times over. Of his many achievements, pioneering dub at his Black Ark studio is the standout. He didn't concentrate on singing until relatively late: his first full-length vocal set arrived in 1978, but the next didn't surface until the mid-1980s, when a transformed Perry washed up in England as a walking performance-art piece,...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Ambient house forefathers The Orb continue to follow in the footsteps of hero Brian Eno with 'C Batter C'. It's a soundscape to film footage of three young children who were taken from Battersea to Greenwich and back in 1956. Mike Coles and Alex Paterson have mashed original and new footage to create a short film, Battersea Bunches (which coincidently is a handful of freshly-picked asparagus)...
- www.clashmusic.com
2011-11-10
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