Track Listing

1. O.O.B.E.
2. U.F.Orb
3. Blue Room
4. Towers Of Dub
5. Close Encounters
6. Majestic
7. Sticky End

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98463 in Music
• Released on: 1992-11-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Deluxe Edition

Amazon.com essential recording
An ambient-techno classic, UFOrb captures Alex Patterson and his sonic henchman at their early peak. While the Orb had already created a dance-floor and chill-out-room sensation in 1991 with Little Fluffy Clouds, this follow-up disc displays Patterson's talent for fusing ambient music with dub science and a club culture mindset. Incorporating psychedelicized samples over the era's reigning techno beats and deep reggae bass lines, heady compositions such as "Towers of Dub" and "Close Encounters" are excessive in length but consistently entertaining. The album's highlight is an 18-minute version of "Blue Room" (there's a 40-minute version out there, too), which features the sensual bass playing of Jah Wobble and the oscillating guitar of coproducer Steve Hillage. A most serious contribution to the legacy of the modern DJ. --Mitch Myers

Album Description
Out-of-print in the US. Single disc pressing of their sophomore ambient/chill out classic from Alex Paterson and Kris Weston that featured the mammoth single "Blue Room", which clocked in around 40 minutes! By entering the UK Top 10, the track was the longest ever to make the charts! It was recorded with former PiL bassist Jah Wobble and keyboardist Miquette Giraudy, as well as guitarist Steve Hillage. Seven tracks including 'Towers Of Dub', 'Majestic', 'Close Encounters' and the aforementioned 'Blue Room'. Universal.

Customer Reviews

A Scientific Journey for Orb Pioneers
Since releasing Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, I think U.F.Orb is where DJ's like John Digweed got influences. This album is good because it is almost like a soundtrack of some sci fi music when having the listening experience with some tracks that give energy. Favorites on this disc are U.F.Orb, Towers of Dub, Close Encounters, and Blue Room.

If you like Future Sound of London's release of Lifeforms and Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, dig your ears in this!! The Frank De Wulf mix of Blue Room kicks butt!!

Drone ship in orbit...
I got this album when it was released back in 1992, it is the limited 2 disc set, the first being the complete U.F.Orb album, the second disc being the complete "Blue Room" (running at 39:58 minutes, and also made it to #8 on the UK charts back then) with two edits and a fourth track titled "Assassin." Compared to some other ambient music in my collection from back then, these two albums have aged extremely well. I think the key to this is the number of different sounds and samples - it never relies on synth pads to make its point. All of the music on both discs have enough burbles, wild cat noises, NASA conversations, throat clearings, melodies show snippets (one funny one; a portion of the background intro music from the Nintendo SNES game "Darius Twin" appears as the main melodic line in "The Blue Room (Remix)" on the bonus disc - fits in amazingly well, has a great sinister sound to it) and interesting sounds to make it a happy listen.
The 40 minute version of "Blue Room" and "Towers of Dub" are my favorites, Towers features some nice harmonica work and a great sample from Woody Allen's "Sleeper." One of the most played albums from my collection. Thank you very much Alex Paterson. Highly recommended - buy the album, take it for a spin and go meet Haile Selassie at Babylon & Ting.

The sound of an epoch
This is a condensed version of the original triple vinyl release of 'U.F.Orb', which came 'hermetically sealed' in blue-grey PVC and had to be cut open with knife or scissors - a typically elaborate Paterson/Cauty marketing gimmick that also seemed to say something about how they viewed The Orb as a cultural project. It was as if 'U.F.Orb' was a time capsule, a distillation of the sprawling experiments on 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld', a sealed container flung into space to show the rest of the universe what it was like on Earth (or at least in Britain) in 1992.

As a summation of a point in musical time, it's as evocative as 'Revolver' or 'Ziggy Stardust' or 'Sound Affects'. And like all of those, there's something ineffably British about the way The Orb took beats from Detroit, minimalist compositions from New York and dub from Jamaica, and stretched and warped them into a completely new form. If the clubs were full of house and techno, the bedrooms were full of smoke and ambient dub, and The Orb were responsible for much of it.

'U.F.Orb' is their finest achievement, proving that 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' wasn't a novelty record but the herald (along with The KLF's 'Chill Out') of a new genre. The sound here is both denser and more dubby, with more going on but less dependence on the BBC sound effects records and slowed-down house beats that were the backbone of their earlier work. 'Blue Room' (here edited from its 39'58" single length) and 'Towers of Dub' are the standouts, but The Orb's legacy is even more impressive than their music. You can hear it not only in experimental 'dance' music from Shpongle to Monolake, from Portishead to Lemon Jelly; it's embedded in mainstream pop, soundtracks and muzak the world over. And if you still have that triple vinyl release, with the PVC intact, I bet it's worth a fortune.