The Orb - Baghdad Batteries

  http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=10509 said:

Seminal UK ambient outfit The Orb are set to release their new LP, Baghdad Batteries in July.

 

Widely credited as a driving force behind the early '90s chill out and ambient house movements, the group has existed in various different formats during their two decade life span, with founding member Dr Alex Paterson remaining the only consistent player throughout. Baghdad Batteries heralds the reunification of Paterson and long-term collaborator Thomas Fehlmann who last sparred together on 2005's Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt.

 

The album will be the third in the Orbsessions series for UK imprint Malicious Damage, although whereas the previous two entries were comprised of "nuggets trawled from the vaults," the latest offering will be composed of brand new material recorded at Fehlmann's Berlin studio. So how does it sound? Expect a "subterranean house pulse beamed up from the Earth's core, resulting in a new form of space disco which sounds as old as time itself while brushed with the most future-pointed minimal techno shadows," and you'll be somewhere close.

 

Tracklisting

01. Styrofoam Meltdown

02. Chocolate Fingers

03. Baghdad Batteries

04. Raven's Reprise

05. Dolly Unit

06. Super Soakers

07. Suburban Smog

08. Orban Tumbleweed

09. Pebbles

10. Woodlarking

11. OOPA

 

Malicious Damage will release Baghdad Batteries by The Orb on July 6, 2009.

Important bits (for me anyway) highlighted in bold.

new orb = win

sweeet

nice, orb w/ t. fehlmann = win

Though I heard so many bad things about the last orb album that I couldn't be arsed to check it out

Yeah it wasn't great, not shite, but certainly not great. The Orb basically needs Mr. Fehlmann...

the orb now seems like a vanity project for paterson where he needs a good producer to make a good album.

Well I'll check this out

Excellent news.

*ejaculates*

Wasnt that impressed with The Dream but am a big fan in general, Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld is probably my favorite album. He needs Kris Weston back to get them on form again IMO.

I haven't bought any Orb past Orblivion... so perhaps I'm assuming too much here but... I think we can only really get excited when we see all the tracks on an album being at least 9 minutes long. Considering there's 11 tracks here, I don't think that's gonna happen.

I do want to hear new music from the Orb and not just a rehash of old ideas, but I think they took their stuff in the wrong directions.

orblivion is so good, I've listened enough to scratch the disc and I still hear new things playing it on the highway.

they're so mild now though, the ra podcast sounded like it was all gas. this could be kind of exciting compared to the last album though... fehlmann + paterson would be a little less blah, and on malicious damage instead of kompakt could be a little less conventional.

Booo, it's moved back to 11st September.....

  mcbpete said:

Yeah it wasn't great, not shite, but certainly not great. The Orb basically needs Mr. Fehlmann...

no fehlmann should just stick to making amazing beats and tracks himself. his solo lps are amazing, but he removes the element of utter goofiness that permeates all the early records without him. paterson has said this many times in interviews, that thomas holds him back. kris weston needs to be brought back. we want silly strung out orb. not clicky beats and stunning production that fehlmann is so capable of making.

Bump, this is out tomorrow. Apparently it sounds like a hybrid of Orbus Terrarum and Okie Dokie and it quite dark sounding. Looking forward to it !

(Edit - Not quite sure where my first post on this topic has gone, and why everything is in a crazy box to the side ....)

  On 9/6/2009 at 4:49 PM, mcbpete said:

Bump, this is out tomorrow. Apparently it sounds like a hybrid of Orbus Terrarum and Okie Dokie and it quite dark sounding. Looking forward to it !

 

(Edit - Not quite sure where my first post on this topic has gone, and why everything is in a crazy box to the side ....)

If this album is on par with Orbus Terrarum, I'm definitely going to get it!

yeah who the fuck crazyboxxed page 1? I hope this is good despite the poopie title

Fixed the crazy box shenanigans using an old skool version of Internet Explorer that couldn't make head nor tail of the javascript so didn't bother rendering it.

Just noticed on discogs that this is also called Orbsessions 3... what's the deal with these? Are the other Orbsessions any good & worth a listen?

no.2 is a lot better than no.1 - well actually that's unfair, in my opinion 2 is better than 1 but they're really quite different, 1 is maily older B-Sides/Rarities and 2 newer B-Sides/Rarities. They're definitely worth a purchase though....

this is definitely as good as orbus terrarum. excellent

this is good news. wasn't too keen on The Dream either. Orblivion/Cydonia stuff was my favourite. 

I can't get into the previews of this at all, am I missing something?

Orbsessions 2 is good, it has the unreleased Cydonia jungle tracks. The first one felt lazy to me, on one tune there was this blatant out of place, out of tempo sample of a Michael Mayer track which backed one of their Kompakt singles.

i cant be the only one blown away by this

I'm still waiting for this to arrive in the post...