Orblivion

Taking a leap of blind faith at a CD trade store the day before leaving North Carolina, I selected this as my cross-country excursion on my way moving to California after turning in two REM CDs and a Green Day CD in exchange for this album. Suffice to say, I'm glad somebody else hated it enough to donate it to a trade store, because I loved it when I got it and listened to it.

For thousands of miles my parents and I enjoyed the sci-fi like electronic atmospheres and ambient compositions throughout this album, keeping our sanity from a horrendous road trip in check. This being my first Orb album was the gateway to owning more Orb--a financially dangerous addiction, if you will.

Back to the content of the music. Nothing, nothing is better than having the sunroof opened when driving in the starry Arizona desert night with "Passing of Time" playing, or "Asylum"'s early-morning-dance-club techno rhythms moving along with the road's dashes and painted lines on a highway in Tennessee. And staring at a red sunset in New Mexico without blinking throughout the 6-minute duration of "Molten Love" and it's futuristic surreality (something about it's flutelike percussion will bring forth vague memories you can't put into shape or form, but you know they're there) is like reaching the state of nirvana (though, "Little Fluffy Clouds" from OABTUW might have been more fitting if I had it then :)).

This album is not only a good introduction to The Orb, but also a good introduction to a more intelligent form of electronic music, especially for those who are tired of more cliche-based genres.

Orblivion -does- get somewhat tiring and monotonous in theme and style by the 8th track, but you get used to it. Some people criticize this album for not being like "the old Orb we used to know", but listening closely to both Orblivion and OABTUW side-by-side, you can tell Dr. Patterson put more love, devotion, and creative output into Orblivion.


Towers of dub   April 26, 2000
XS (Regensburg, Germany)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful

The party was pretty much over for The Orb in 1997. They had lost their cult status with the poor "Pomme Fritz", and compared with their greatest success "U.F.Orb", "Orblivion" was a commercial disaster. Given that other techno artists like Aphex Twin, Autechre, or Squarepusher had already begun to experiment with the extreme edge of sound, "Orblivion" seems a little calm and outdated. The result is an album with some brilliant moments, but overall, it tends to move over the listener without having any real impact. It is, however, a partial return to the intricately detailed and well-devised music of The Orb's early albums. It's The Orb's destiny that the ambient tracks always will be compared with their excellent classic "A huge ever growing..", but the heart of "Orblivion" undoubtedly lies in its clubby tracks. The standout piece here is "Toxygene" with its grinding, bass-heavy rhythm pattern. All in all, "Orblivion" doesn't add new wrinkles to electronic music, but it's still good 'escape music'. Well done.


Trippy music   June 9, 2004
Enrique Torres (San Diegotitlan, Califas)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

From 1997 comes this Orbdelicious delight that I recently resurrected after a friend returned my copy. Well to use a cliche phrase from the 60's I'd have to say "What a trip!" That pretty much sums up this disc that I find to be not as good as the excellent "U.F. Off. The Best of the Orb." I love the Orb, it is music that is spacey, groovy and upbeat. Without going to much into the individual tracks suffice to say that the disc is like one continous pendium where the music infiltrates your mind and won't let go until you've heard it all. This is music to move to. Personally I find it the best music to listen to while rollerblading, moving along with the breeze cutting through your hair and the music slicing and dicing images in your brain. Any moving activity will do be it biking, driving a car or walking; it will make your trip a little more pleasant but dangerous as the sounds creep in and out through your ears. "Asylum" is a song that could be just as comfortable at a night club now as in a hippie-era dancehall with strobes and fluid liquid imagery bouncing off the walls. Beeeeeeuuuuuutiful baby! There are moments of dark pessimism like in "S.A.L.T." where an apcalyptic sermon delivered between the electronic wizardry can leave you feeling like the seven seals of Revelation have been broken. "Secrets" has a bit of a Middle Eastern flair as does "Bedouin" but the intangible likeness is blurred and rearranged in electronic madness. This is a conceptual disc that paints a surreal world of tommorrow, that came yesterday before there was tommorow, lost somewhere in the here and now of today. It is music to take a journey on, let your mind be your guide as you listen to the Orb opening up the passages. Recommended music for the head.


The Orb Reinvented   June 28, 2000
El Reanimator-o (The CO)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

One thing to understand is that The Orb is constantly evolving, and no one album sounds like the one that came before it. That having been said, this makes "Orblivion" even more stunning than it already is. Dr. Alex Patterson, along with Andy Hughes and Thomas Felhmann have created an epic leading into the new millenium. The lead off track, "Delta MKII", is a frenzy of bleeps and bloops and constantly changing percussion over samples about Communists and the military. A barrage of pinball machine leads us into "Ubiquity". A sweeping array consisting of a bouncy beats, a nice floating keyboard hook, and a multitude of crazy sounds. Quite a nice track. "Asylum" is a nice 5 minute break from the cranks and whirs of the first two tracks. Probably one of the standout songs on the album. "Bedouin" has a playful tribal vibe to it which dissolves into utter creepiness, and "Molten Love" keeps the closest ties to "Pomme Fritz" and "Orbus Terrarum". The short barrage of noise that is "Pi" brings us into "S.A.L.T.", a barrage of jungle beats over a Scot ranting about the apocalypse. "Toxygene", the first single from the album, is incredibly catchy and will make you want to get up and groove. There's yet another small noise track, "Log Of Deadwood", then we're lead into "Secrets". A relatively subdued track, this has to be heard to describe just how great it is. "Passing of Time" is a Pink Floydian epic for the '90s, while "72" is just quite simply, the youth of America on LSD.

This album seems to tie up everything The Orb has done. It manages to catch the ambience, randomness, and off key humor of "Pomme Fritz" and "Orbus Terrarum", while adding in the dance-like beats, catchy hooks, and utter bliss of "UFOrb" and "Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld".