Music > Live Reviews

The Orb

The Adrian Flux Waterfront

02/12/16

When The Orb’s first two albums came out in the very early 90’s my young ears were mainly full of grunge, hip hop and rock, but somehow I found a space in my lugs for a new and eclectic form of dance music, a mixture of weird samples, heavy beats and ambient stretches – it beguiled me. Yet for some reason I’ve never seen The Orb live before now – I guess the planets weren’t aligned correctly until tonight.

The Waterfront holds a medium sized, mixed age crowd, with all types from 50 year old bespectacled businessmen to dreadlocked women in their 20’s. Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann amble on stage with such modesty that I barely notice they’ve started playing. They’re dwarfed rather by two large screens either side of them which provide the visual element to the evening, seeing as really, as much as we love them, there’s not a huge amount of obvious activity from the musicians, apart from knob twiddling and the occasional spin back. So the visuals are a necessary treat, if you will, consisting of the likes of flowers, jellyfish, women dancing in masks, scarecrows and glitter painted faces bouncing about.

It takes a few tracks for the audience to kind of get the vibe – we all start off standing still, watching the stage, but eventually loosen up and  get the party started proper. Still, it’s a crowd of two sides, dancers and watchers. It kind of works, it kind of doesn’t – we don’t feel cohesive as a room but everyone seems to feel comfortable enjoying the night in their own way. For an hour we are played, live, tracks from their debut collection, Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, and bearing in mind that this album was released 25 years ago, it absolutely sounds like the dog’s bollocks. Energetic yet relaxed, the sound snaps tightly and the bass rumbles deep; it’s a pleasure just to enjoy electronic music played loud, from hip hop and reggae rhythms to break beats, and it’s the occasional quiet, dreamy, ambient spaces that make them fall into even sharper relief.

The highlight has to be of course, Little Fluffy Clouds, which creeps up on us and builds to an extended filthy, booming, beefy finale – the highlight of my night. We’re all just getting going when Alex and Thomas leave the stage with a small smile and wave and take 15 minutes to relax those fingers and ears and probably have a nice cuppa.

Unfortunately this means that when we return the atmosphere feels slightly flat again, and it takes some time to rebuild. After a couple of ambient tracks which includes the sounds of harps and dolphins the beat picks up, and is pretty much relentlessly heavy for another hour. This is the time when the old skool ravers come into their own, reliving heady drug fuelled moments watching the sun rise over the fields, or losing their minds in a nightclub (remember those?) back in the 90’s. Bits of Blue Room, Towers of Dub and A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain float through my ears, but no Perpetual Dawn which makes me a little sad. 

During the very small gaps between the tracks there are whoops and cheers, and a wry smile from Alex; I only hear one small beat matching error all night, which is quite something considering everything’s being performed live, plus the two of them barely look at each other. Leaving the Waterfront, I look into the sweaty, happy faces of mums and dads who for one evening have shrugged off all responsibility and simply lost themselves in the music of their youth, danced and shook it all about. And that’s what it’s all about.

Read our interview with Alex Paterson here