Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld - The Orb (1991)
Electronic artists have never had a monopoly on the “music to listen to in a dark room while getting faded” subgenre.
The first time I got stoned, the girl I was hanging with played an absurdist spoken word piece by Michael Hutchence from a movie soundtrack, a memory that still sits with me some 30 years later. See also Firesign Theatre or The Red Krayola for pre-digital adventures in altered states.
The Orb were trailblazers in this space for fully electronic music. They played around with plunderphonic-style samples, drum loops, live instruments, spoken word snippets, and all kinds of dance and dub effects to build a quirky little world all their own.
Some of it is frenetic house beats, while elsewhere you get more subtle soundscapes that sound like a soundtrack to nothing in particular.
You’d be forgiven for not catching much of a plot here. but The throughline is that each track gave us a cheeky but genuine glimpse into the alternate universes that were about to open up in the world of recorded music.
