THIRTY-FIVE YEARS since The Orb’s emergence as chillout DJs fêted by John Peel, their relationship to dance music continues much as it began – in a room off to one side, happily doing their own thing. “If you’ve got a good ear, nothing can stop you,” says the group’s sole constant Alex Paterson, still a proud non-musician. “That’s something I’ve proven to all my contemporaries, that you should just go ahead and do it. If you’ve got belief, that’s half the battle won.”
The Orb are generally thought of as a duo, with Paterson joined by a series of co-pilots: Jimmy Cauty, Kris “Thrash” Weston, Thomas Fehlmann and most recently Michael Rendell. But he prefers to view The Orb as a much broader collective, encompassing everyone from prog titans Steve Hillage and David Gilmour to long-time vibes controller DJ Lewis and occasional vocalists such as Eric Von Skywalker, who Paterson met years ago playing basketball. “They come into the fold, and we get into their fold,” he explains. “And then the fold gets bigger and we create our own fold around that fold.” His dog Ruby even gets a credit on new album Prism, The Orb’s 18th overall. Just like the Arizona skies that Rickie Lee Jones reminisced about on “Little Fluffy Clouds”, they went on forever.
ADVENTURES BEYOND THE ULTRAWORLD
WAU! MR MODO/BIG LIFE, 1991
After splitting with initial Orb partner Jimmy Cauty, Paterson leans on a community of fellow space cadets – and a huge arsenal of samples – to create a defining chillout meisterwerk
John Peel played “A Huge“…Fluffy Clouds” as a single mix. The one day a week Jimmy was giving The Orb and the six days a week he was giving The KLF, that was the problem. And I think The Orb is worth more than one day a week in anybody’s creative mind, which I proved with .
