OJe Suis Seul

A piss poor amount of the white stuff fell here overnight. Big freeze my arse, although I'm sure down south it may well be a diifferent matter and civilisation will be on the brink.

Anyhow, here is a track that I've posted before in it's Weatherall remix form. The other side however never seems to get any attention , so in the interest of balance here is The Orb and Andrew Weatherall's mix of O Je Suis seul and very good it is too.

West India Company -  O Je Suis Seul (Orient Express mix)

Majestic

On the long journey up the road on Friday while making the resolution of never drinking with Davy H on a school night ever again, I was looking for something mellow to play and decided upon the Orb. Recently whenever I have reached for the Orb it has been Adventures, or Baghdad Batteries. I felt that the former was rather too cliched for this situation and well,  Baghdad Batteries had too many beats for my head to contend with at that time.

I decided to opt for U.F.Orb which I realised I hadn't played for a long time, if you discount the full version of The Blue Room or the Mad Professor's mix of Towers Of Dub,  both of which get dusted down every month or so. I started to ponder why this was as I immersed myself in the soundscape that is O.O.B.E.and in no time at all I began to feel human again, the combination of the sounds of Dr Alex and Thrash and the second gin and tonic doing the trick nicely. By the time Majestic began to pound through my headphones I had resolved to play this criminally overlooked album much more often.

I remember seeing "The Orb is not just for Christmas" written somewhere, never a truer statement.

The Orb - Majestic

Keeping It Peel, Number 1

Well here it is, my favourite session track ever from the John Peel show.  Another one of those "what the fuck" moments and not just from me I think,  as it was also the most requested session for repeat.

I did hear it first on the Peel show and I can honestly say it was like nothing else I had ever heard before, totally unique. For one thing there didn't seem to be any structure to the track, just snippets of dialogue, samples of everything from jets to cockerels, beats floating in and out and it seemed to go on forever. Before this session I had never heard of the Orb and I don't think it was until the second or third repeat that I actually caught the name.

This session didn't just baffle the listeners but also the staff at Maida Vale didn't have a clue what was happening during the recording of the track. Here are Alex Paterson's recollections of the session lifted from Ken Garner's excellent book the Peel Sessions, which if you don't have a copy you really should click here and rectify the situation.

"We turned up early and, finding nobody about, started setting up the turntables and desk in the control room. Suddenly the producer appeared and bawled out: "Get this equipment out of here!" He told us to set up in the studio and come back at 2pm. We said that we were going to generate a load of samples then mix it off the multi-track, which he didn't seem to get. We were so put off that we went round to a friend's house for an hour. But we were determined to defeat this producer so we went back, and pulled all the sofas and lamp stands into the middle of Studio 3 and set up a little living-room set in this huge studio, like something out of Alice In Wonderland and got the main lights switched off, to get a good atmosphere. I just started throwing all these samples at Jimmy: Waves, birdsong, jets, old Sci-Fi play excerpts, those "Aaaahs" of Grace Jones' Slave To The Rhythm, and Minnie Ripperton's Loving You, of course (we'd already started this thing of crediting all our samples, and virtually mixing the drums out of house music). And Jimmy did this great live mix really quick. I think that we were out of the building by 7pm! I think that it was the best mix we ever did of that. The head of Geffen records was over here, and listening to it on Peel while driving and had to pull over, he was so knocked out. He tried too sign us for America, but we already had a deal. The whole thing couldn't have been planned: it was just a very vivid day, because we were finding it so entertaining to defeat this producer bloke."

This session for me is one of the best illustrations of why John Peel is revered by so many people and was so essential to popular music during the thirty seven years that he was broadcasting on the BBC.  Long before the Radio One bosses decided that they needed specialist dance dj's Peel had been championing house and hip-hop. No other DJ anywhere in 1989 would have had the courage or sheer bloodymindedness to play a 20 minute noodling like A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Loving You) and for that reason alone he should be saluted.

And lets not forget all of the bands he gave the chance for more than their mates to hear by airing their demos or first singles. Or the obscure reggae, soul and other genres that got no other national airplay. He certainly contributed greatly to me opening my mind to music that probably if I hadn't heard it on his show I would have remained oblivious to.

Another reason I respect the man so much is that he refused the Irish Band a session, bit petty I know but that's me.

John Peel meant many things to many people,  from the sympathetic voice that listened to peoples woes and idiosyncrasies on Radio 4's Home Truths,  the devoted Liverpool supporter who cried on air after the Hillsborogh tragedy, the champion of so many different genres of music not least punk,  to the hippy who was friends with Mark Bolan and presented The Perfumed Garden.

It may be an overused phrase but it makes it no less true that his like will never be seen or heard over the airwaves again.

Teenage dreams so hard to beat



 Orb Session recorded 03rd December 1989 aired 19th December 1989

Tracklisting: A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Loving You)

The Orb - A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld  (Loving  You)
Alternative zipped file

Suburban Smog

Here is a track from the recent album from everybody's favourite ambient collective.

I sort of lost track of The Orb after the Orblivion album, I think that I just got bored of that sort of music at the time and also I was compairing every release to Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and nothing after wards quite made the grade in my opinion to that seminal album.

A couple of months ago I took a punt on the Orb's latest offering Baghdad Batteries, the third in a series of Orbsessions albums. although this is all new material not rare session tracks. The music is quite different from the early stuff but at the moment I'm really loving it. There is one problem with this, it now means that I will have to go back and fill in the gaps in my Orb collection now, which won't be cheap.

See what you think?

The Orb - Suburban Smog

Half Term

It's half term or the October Week up here and I will be away up north to the most westerly point on the British mainland, Ardnamurchan for a few days with the family tomorrow. Returning mid week only to go off to Berlin with work which will encroach on my weekend.

So nothing to see here until next Sunday.

I'll leave you with a one of my favourite Weatherall mixes and a brilliant mix by the Mad Professor, I'm in a bit of a dubby mood, tonight.

The Orb - Perpetual Dawn (Ultrabass II mix)

Massive Attack vs The Mad Professor - Radiation Ruling The Nation

Jam On The Mutha

After 19 years I still don't know whether I like this track or not.

I like the idea of it and most of the time will play the instru-mental mix rather than vocal Ibiza 90 mix. I also loved the fact that when I dropped it in the pub where I djed, I would get some long hair or double denim clad type coming up and calling it sacrelidge and how dare I play this rubbish, which just made me play it all the more.

I bought Jam on The Mutha's cover of Hotel California in the remix format first as it was remixed by the Orb and Orb remixes were always worth the money , it was also in the bargain bin, so I couldn't really lose.

I know very little about Jam on The Mutha, apart from the fact that it seems to be one of Youth's many guises and that Hotel California was released on Wau! Mr Modo, the same label as The Orb at the time.

I will make one statement for the defence in the case for the release of this record, it was 1990 and the E's were very good.

Jam On The Mutha - Hotel California ( Ibiza 90 mix)

Jam On The Mutha - Hotel California (Orb In Cali mix)