The Orb - Breaking The Rules

Many would be familiar with The Orb through their most famous recording from 1991, Little Fluffy Clouds; a track synonymous with a sound that developed a cult following amongst clubbers and became known as 'chill out" - music to come down to after a night out on the dancefloor. Since that early era The Orb have moved through a myriad of varying sounds and styles throughut their illustrious career, including a brief stint flirting with minimal techno on Kompakt in the 00s. Most recently, the band famously collaborated with Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and the group are now preparing for the release of their 12th studio album with dub and reggae legend, Lee 'Scratch' Perry this September; news that was revelaed exclusively to Pulse. Henry Johnstone chatted with The Orb's Alex Paterson and found him a pleasure to interview; very open, forthcoming and good-humoured.

Pulse: Even prior to your collaborations, critics and journalists drew a lot of comparisons between The Orb’s music and Pink Floyd’s. Is it wholly founded? Or do journos generally just like to connect things and then have a bit of a wank over it? Alex Paterson: [Laughs] There was nothing really deliberate about that at all, it just sort of happened. I think the press wanted to describe us as something that they could identify with and so people picked up this mantle that we were the new Pink Floyd, which was to me absolute bollocks. As you say, it was a whole lot of wank. I never really considered myself a Pink Floyd fan. Maybe way back in the early 70s when I was a kid, and I’m talking 13 or 14 then, maybe some Led Zeppelin too, but then I always liked Alice Cooper better than those bands.

One of my friends from school ended up being the bass player for Pink Floyd after Roger Waters left. Also, there’s always been a big family connection between Pink Floyd and The Orb as well, because Guy who played bass on the first Orb album, he ended up being the live bass player in Pink Floyd and also married into the family. So there’s a humongously big connection there.

Anyway, so, we did an album Metallic Spheres with Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and it did rather well. It was a bit naughty – he came in to do a single but he gave us so many guitar parts that we thought why don’t we just turn this into one big track, which ended up as an album. It took a lot of persuading for him to release it actually, but it put us back on the map for a while and got our heads above water.

Now we’re back down below water, but hopefully later on in the year we’ve got the new album coming out with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry doing vocals. I think it’s one of the best bits of work we’ve ever done. Followed by next year we’ll be writing an opera for the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and if that goes well we might be touring that around the world. So watch out Sydney Opera House, you never know where The Orb might appear. And that’s all coming from being an ambient house DJ in clubs; that’s some kinda trip! [laughs]

There’s actually an event that happens every year in Winter at Sydney Opera House called Vivid. One year it was curated by Brian Eno, so I think your opera would be a great fit. Blimey. I used to go and watch Eno’s stuff in London back in the 80s. I got free tickets cause I used to be his A&R scout at his record label. Yeah I’m very much aware of Eno’s stuff, he’s been a total inspiration to me. Except The Orb just took it one stage further; we put the beat in rather than just leaving the ‘pling, plong, pling, plong, pling, pling…’ That’s all we did!

I read that you have a friend who might be making some dubstep remixes of tracks from Metallic Spheres. Is this going to eventuate? Actually that reminds me I can bring some of that stuff out to Australia to play. It will go really well in between some of our tracks when we play live.

The thing with the Gilmour project was it came out through Columbia/Sony, which is major label and they don’t believe in things like remixes. After things are done they just want to move on to another project. Unlike a small label where they’ll nurture something and release a 7 inch then release maybe a limited edition vinyl, just to get people interested in the DJ world, then release the album.

Yeah OK, the album did really well around the world, but it had Gilmour’s name on it. But it’s inspired Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry to come along and say “I’ll do an album with you”, which is interesting. We wanted to do a souly type, modern, minimal album with some reggae influences with his vocals on top. He’s gonna be coming out on tour with us as well. We’ll be doing festivals at the end of this year; hopefully we’ll be coming down to Australia again before Christmas. We’ve agreed to do a few festivals because the album’s coming out in September, and you just heard that first. I only got that information two days ago basically.

I wanted to ask you, have you heard any music that people are referring to as, and please excuse this term as I think it’s awful, as ‘chillwave’? People like Washed Out, Memory Tapes or Neon Indian? No, I’m afraid not. I try to keep up. I do a radio show called Chewy Choosedays every week on Fnoob.com, so if anybody wants to send me any music, I’ll gladly have a listen and if I like it I’ll give it a twirl and play it. My ears are very open to new music, I’m not like it’s got to be this or got to be that. The weirder the better. The more experimental the better, let’s say. Though the show probably wouldn’t be on a Tuesday for you, it’d be on a Wednesday morning, but that’s OK because every show is downloadable for free. I think I’m up to my 70th show or something now. They vary from two to three to even six hours, and recently I did a 24 hour show to raise money for the radio station and we raised over 1500 quid, which I’m really proud of. We get about 5000 listeners, there’s even a music teacher in Cancun who get his classroom of kids to listen. They donated loads of money, it was unbelievable. Really, really sweet. I’m more proud of doing stuff like that, that’s all I can say.

Being an act whose work has often been heavily sample based, you’re obviously of the opinion that anyone’s music is fair game to be manipulated and transformed into anything that you like. That there are no rules. Would that be correct? There are no rules because look at someone who’s influenced everybody; Elvis Presley. So everyone started sounding like Elvis Presley. Then the Beatles come along, and everybody wants to sound like The Beatles. The Stones come along, same thing. The Sex Pistols come along, same thing. Now that’s not creating new music, that’s just following a pattern, but it’s acceptable suddenly because it’s ‘new’. But what we did was take a sampler and use it as an instrument and actually turned a lot of music into a different form of music. It just took us a bit longer to be accepted.

I mean the things that we did like the Ultraworld album, I’m not blowing my own trumpet but that doesn’t sound out of date, it sounds quite current still. That album came out in ’91 but many of those tracks were written in the 80s. Some of them we couldn’t fit onto the first album so it went on the second one. We actually wanted to do a triple disc album but the record label wouldn’t let us. We were trying to break boundaries! “Oh you can’t do a 40 minute single,” they said. Yes, you can! Watch, here we go. “Fuck, they did.” And people were interested in it. They just treat people [record labels] as sheep and marketing tools, even back then. Even more so now, too. So I just had to use my wit and get-up-and-go attitude to try and change a few things.

A buzzer sounds over the phone.

Oooh, one minute left! That’s the lady buzzing you! [laughs]

One minute! Ok, final question: Do you think the style of music you make is a reflection of your personality? Mmm interesting question. Yes I do think so. I suffered when I was a child, I lived in a dream world and its very apparent in my music. And I’m not looking for any shoulder to cry on when I say that either, it’s just the way it was and you can’t change it. You’ve got to deal with it and I’ve dealt with it by doing music.

Thanks for your time, Alex. It’s been pretty cool. Thank you very much.

The Orb is touring Australia, including the Playground Weekender Festival, this March.

Listen to The Orb on Pulse Radio