IF you're going to play around with the notions and relative importance of "form" and "content", and use phrases like sonic graffiti spray can paintings that mirror and stimulate the chemically stuttered lost-and-found-and-lost-it-again, time-distorted synapses of music", you'd either want to have a highly developed sense of humour or be a totally cool person.
The Orb win out on both counts. They first impinged on the senses with A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rule's From The Centre Of The Ultra world, a not too conventional "song" that sampled Minnie Ripperton's Loving You with choral parts, jet noises, conversations and church bells drifting in and out of the mix with nothing short of contempt for orthodox musical structures. Then they released Little Fluffy Clouds, and in so doing rewrote Brian Eno's initial blueprint for this music we call "ambient". And then they released a single that was 40 minutes long called The Blue Room (an alien abduction epic - incidentally label-mates U2 were to use the same title on one of their Passenger songs years later) and when they went on Top Of The Pops to play it they just sat there playing chess in front of the cameras.
Little surprise that Jimmy Cauty was involved in the early Orb line-up, for it was the same Jimmy Cauty who went on to form KLF and the K foundation, who proved themselves to be the most interesting thing to happen to the music industry since Dave Robinson formed Stiff Records in 1976. Cauty was replaced by Youth, from Killing Joke (a band who are plenty crazy themselves)
Soon number one albums became the order of the day as Adventures Beyond The UltraworId (1991) and UFOrb saw them become the biggest "ambient" (ish) band in the world. Signed to an indie label, the obligatory Stone Roses vs. Silvertone, Nirvana vs. Sub Pop-type legal hassle followed as they tried to release themselves from their indie contract and sign to a major (Island Records). All this kept them out of the studio for a few years, but during that time they busied themselves doing remixes for Depeche Mode, U2, Yello and Dave Stewart. The latter just for a laugh. They also had the good sense to turn down a request from Jean-Michel Jarre to do a total remix of his horrific Oxygene album and make it into something groovy.
Their first Island studio album, Pomme Fritz (1994) saw them lose the plot slightly - but now they're back with their best work for years with a new single, Toxygene (spot the none-too-subtle Jean-Michel Jarre put down) and a new album, Orblivion. Now down to core member, Alex Patterson (although Andy Hughes and Thomas Fehlmann help out), Orblivion sees them take a more "direct beats" approach with plenty of drum'n'bass and dub working feverishly away through the grooves. There's at least one classic on the album, and that is S.A.L.T.; which features an inspired sample of David Thewlis's apocalyptic rant from Mike Leigh's Naked film.
LOTS of new Setanta stuff out at the moment: The Harvest Ministers' new album, Orbit, is not as hook-laden and engaging as the previous one, A Feeling Mission, on first listen; but perseverance (and it does take some) reveals some good stuff going on. Meanwhile, Fermanagh's answer to Barry White, Divine Comedy will release his new live, mini-album next week. Called rather pedantically A Short Album Abou Love, young Neil Hannon says "these songs will make men cringe, women cry and dogs wag their tails" (see review in Disc Drive). More from Neil next week.
. Blur will be launching their new album with a none-too-secret gig in London next Monday night in a special tribute concert for Dublin journalist Leo Finlay. You can hear it all live as it happens; on the Dave Fanning show on 2FM at 8 p.m.
