Track Listing

1. A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld
2. Little Fluffy Clouds
3. Perpetual Dawn
4. Blue Room
5. Assassin
6. Pomme Fritz (Meat 'N Veg)
7. Toxygene
8. Outlands
9. Asylum
10. Mickey Mars
11. Towers Of Dub
12. Pi (Part 1)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8512 in Music
• Released on: 2003-08-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds
• Running time: 77 minutes

Amazon.co.uk
The title, coupled with a sleeve depicting an Apollo launch pad with a huge middle finger giving that gesture, summarises the ethos of former Killing Joke roadie Alex Patterson's The Orb. Their musical scale is gargantuan and fearlessly meandering, taking in ambient, reggae, techno and innumerable mutated samples. In order to pre-empt "prog-rave" tags or accusations of Pink Floyd-style pretentiousness, however, Paterson and his various collaborators always took a facetious, self-deflating approach to their work. In spite of the aura of silliness shrouding The Orb--as evinced on titles like "A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Underworld"--they can't puncture the delights of the freewheeling, orbiting "Pomme Fritz" or the intoxicating "Little Fluffy Clouds" with its ingenious sample of a Rickie Lee Jones interview. This compilation could either serve as an introduction to The Orb or as sufficient for those unwilling to follow them on some of their more extreme sonic excursions. --David Stubbs

CD Description
During the rave explosion of the early 1990s, U.K. act the Orb began mixing slower house tempos with ambient music inspired by '70s pioneers like Brian Eno and Steve Hillage. The trippy, often beatless music found favor with clubbers retreating from the loud, rhythmic techno typically played at raves, ostensibly kick-starting the ambient house genre and a whole new context for DJs, the chill-out room. Fronted by charismatic leader and musical omnivore Alex Paterson, the Orb experimented with mixing a diverse array of samples and musical motifs from a variety of disparate genres. Covering 10 years of the band's evolution, U.F.OFF: THE BEST OF THE ORB includes material culled from four studio albums, singles, and unreleased studio outtakes. Sequenced non-chronologically and stitched together like a DJ-mix, the album flows seamlessly from ambient breakbeat excursions to dub-inflected soundcollages in the span of its 12 tracks. From the pulsating reggae shuffle of "Perpetual Dawn" to the leaden, heavy rootsrhythms of "Towers of Dub", the music contains the distinctimprint of Jamaican music--albeit one marked by a decidedlyfuturistic, sci-fi sensibility. "A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Center of the Underworld", on the other hand, mixes far more eclectic sources, including a Minnie Riperton a cappella and some dark atmospheric synthesizers.

Customer Reviews

Top Stuff
The best place to start for anyone thinking of buying an Orb record as it's got most of their best tunes edited down to a nice length and offers one classic after another. Even if you already own the albums it's still worth getting this 'best of'. My one complaint is that there's no tracks from Orbus Terrarum (aside from having Oxbow Lakes as a secret track) which is a shame as it would be nice to hear a radio edit of Slug Dub. Still an essential purchase.

Well its a "Best Of" isn't it?
What can I say, not that this is the Orb's best album because its not technically an album...however it has all of the Orb's best tracks on. The one thing I regret about buying this album was that it didn't come with the bonus CD. Every track on this album deserves credit so here goes. The album starts with the Minnie Riperton sampling "A Huge Evergrowing Brain...", which puts you right in the mood, this is followed by the Orb's massive "Little Fluffy Clouds", then "Perpetual Dawn" (Solar Youth Mix) quality techno/reggae with vocals over the top, followed by the edit of "Blue Room" which is marvelous, then the lowpoint of the album "Assassin" tis still good however, then the experimental "Pomme Fritz", followed by the bouncey "Toxygene", going on to the quality drum loops and samples of "Outlands", then onto the dancey "DJ Asylum", then onto the previously unreleased "Mickey Mars" which is my favourite, I'm sure this samples Enigma but don't quote me on it, then "Towers of Dub" with its cheeky intro, then "PI (part 1)" an ambient ending...but wait there's more...a hidden track "Oxbow Lakes" is a few minutes after "PI", sweeeeeet music. Must Buy!!!

Shocked and amazed!
As a remix album, i expected dancefloor rubbish. Instead, this gave me a great pile of steaming...GOLD! Offering different versions of my well known tunes, i was 'shocked and amazed' at how good this was. Orb remixes dont suck.