For me the words ambient house strike up images of idiots in zany hats either rolling around on the floor off their face or collaring some poor bystander and bragging that they always get the finest Northern Lights skunk and could beat anyone in a roll the best spliff contest. In other words, I’m not too keen. So when I was given an album by ambient house pioneers The Orb to review I approached it with trepidation, believing I’d have to spend the next hour listening to tubas being played underwater, obscure discordant samples from the BBC Radiophonic, and recordings of Turkmen women tidying up their yurts in the steppes of Central Asia. Luckily I was wrong… in part. There’s still a lot of shit to wade through before you actually get to something listenable, but persevere and you’ll find a couple of decent enough tracks.

 

If you like your dance music to have a beat, it’s fair to say you should avoid the first four tracks. These enforced all the stereotypes that I had about ambient music; backwards instruments, organs going mental for no apparent reason, noises that have little relation to each other apart from the fact they sound weird. Skip instead to Suburban Smog, one of the few tracks worth coming back to that chugs along quite nicely with tribal percussion and sounds a bit like an Evil 9 record. Orban Tumbleweed is also worthy of note and its laid back hip hop has echoes of early DJ Shadow and DJ Krush productions, which is never a bad thing. The rock steady skank of Super Soakers is enjoyable too, but for moments like these you also have to contend with dross like Oopa, which is quite frankly awful. This beatless treat consists of crackling noises and no melody. Around 3 minutes in a woman cackles hysterically at the word ‘Swedish’, before the song slowly grinds to a halt with what sounds like a kettle boiling. I’m sure it’s very experimental, but it is also very bad.

 

Woodlarking is another waste of time. Here an organ grinder sound plinks and plonks along pointlessly, bleeping without structure in a way that is no doubt meant to ‘really trip you out man!’ If I ever took so many drugs that this could start to sound good I’d definitely have to start questioning my sanity.

 

No doubt I am probably missing something in these ambient works that an aging crusty with hemp trousers and dreads can explain to me in detail while snorting 10cm lines of ketamine, but for the time being I’m quite happy to live in ignorance and just enjoy the more coherent tracks this album offers. The Orb have rightfully earned their place in dance music history and their 20-odd years making music, including a number 1 album, is testament to the fact that people still enjoy their music. Unfortunately it mostly goes straight over my head.

 

--Pete Jorgensen