Origins Ambient house was, in the words of John Bush of
AllMusic, "virtually invented" by UK band
the Orb –
Alex Paterson and
Jimmy Cauty – during The Land of Oz events at the night-club
Heaven, while Dom Phillips at
Mixmag has said the Orb "kickstarted the whole ambient business".
Neil McCormick has similarly credited Cauty and Paterson with inventing the genre, in
The Daily Telegraph. In 1989,
Paul Oakenfold ran the
acid house night at
Heaven, and Paterson ran a chill-out counterpart in the White Room with Cauty and
Youth. There, Paterson spun
Brian Eno,
Pink Floyd, and
10CC songs at low volume and accompanied them with multiscreen video projections. another pioneer of the genre. Other early ambient house records included "Sueño Latino" (1989) by the
Italian group of the same name (based on
Manuel Gottsching's 1984 album
E2-E4), "
Pacific State" (1989) by
808 State, "Flotation" (1990) by
the Grid, "Paradise" (1989) by Quadrophenia, "Journeys Into Rhythm" (1989) by Audio One, and "Natural Thing" (1990) by
Innocence. "one of the initial works in the ambient house canon" and "essential" according to John Bush at AllMusic, "one of the most influential records in ambient house music" according to
Pitchfork, and an album with which the KLF were "claiming pre-eminence in the ambient house field" (
Ira Robbins of
Trouser Press). In a press release for
Chill Out,
Scott Piering claimed that the term "ambient house" had been invented "off-the-cuff" by the KLF. After leaving the Orb in April 1990, which was originally intended to be the Orb's debut album, and Paterson's Orb went on to create the single "
Little Fluffy Clouds" with
Youth, In 1991, the Orb released the album ''
The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld'', featuring both of their previous singles. Combining
Moog synthesizers with religious
chorales and audio clips of the
Apollo 11 rocket launch, the Orb popularized the "spacy" sound of ambient house. Ambient house became a label for artists beyond the KLF and the Orb, including
Irresistible Force,
the Future Sound of London, and
Orbital. Other ambient house recordings emerged by artists such as
the Grid ("Flotation" in 1990), Interplay ("Synthesis" in 1991), and the Future Sound of London ("Papua New Guinea" in 1991). An edited form of it appeared on the Orb album
U.F.Orb later that year.
U.F.Orb reached No. 1 in the UK albums chart;
AllMusic called it "the commercial and artistic peak of the ambient-house movement." In the years after the release of their live album,
Live 93, the Orb largely stopped their ambient-house music production, instead concentrating on producing more "metallic" music.
Slant Magazine called it "one of several universally celebrated ambient house records," and labeled each track "its own spacey symphony, etched with ticking clocks, soft piano lines and tidal white noise." == See also ==