1988–1990: Paterson & Cauty Alex Paterson began his music career in the early 1980s as a
roadie for the
post-punk rock band
Killing Joke, for which his childhood friend
Martin "Youth" Glover played bass. Having left Killing Joke's employ, in 1986 Paterson became an A&R man. In 1989, the Orb released the
Kiss EP, a four-track
EP based on samples from New York City's
KISS FM. Paterson and Cauty began DJing in London and landed a deal for the Orb to play the
chill out room at London nightclub
Heaven. Resident DJ
Paul Oakenfold brought in the duo as ambient DJs for his "The Land of Oz" event at Heaven. Though the Orb's Monday night performances had only several hardcore followers initially, its chill-out room act grew so popular over its six-month stay that the room was often packed with around 100 people. The Orb's performances became most popular among weary DJs and clubbers seeking solace from the loud, rhythmic music of the dance floor. The Orb built up melodies using
multitrack recordings linked to multiple
record decks and a
mixer. The group incorporated many CDs, cassettes, and
BBC sound effects, often accompanied by pieces of popular dance tracks such as "
Sueño Latino". so that the intended ambient atmosphere was not disrupted. Most often, the group played
dub and other
chill-out music, which it described as ambient house for the E generation. Throughout 1989 the Orb, along with Youth, developed a
music production style that incorporated
ambient music with a diverse array of
samples and recordings. The British music press later labelled the music
ambient house. The culmination of the group's musical work came toward the end of the same year when they recorded a session for
John Peel on
BBC Radio 1. The track, then known as "Loving You", was largely improvisational and featured a wealth of sound effects and samples from
science fiction radio plays, nature sounds, and
Minnie Riperton's "
Lovin' You". For its release as a single on the record label
Big Life, the Orb changed the title to "
A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld". Upon the single's release, Riperton's management forced Big Life to remove the unlicensed Riperton sample, ensuring that only the initial first-week release of the single contained the original vocals of Minnie Riperton; subsequent pressings used vocals from a sound-alike. Because of these issues, Cauty and Paterson split in April 1990, with Paterson keeping the name the Orb. Also out of these sessions came
the KLF album
Chill Out, on which Reynolds (1999) and Prendergast (2003)
1991–1994: Paterson & Weston In 1991, Paterson invited freelance studio engineer
Andy Falconer to join the Orb. He was closely followed by studio engineer
Kris "Thrash" Weston.
Steve Hillage, who Paterson had met while DJing in London, Retrospectively,
Adventures is considered ground-breaking for changing the way musicians view sampling and as a vital work for the genres of ambient and dance music. The completion of
Adventures saw the departure of Andy Falconer, whose last contribution was to one of the Orb's Peel sessions. To promote the release of an edited single-disc version for an American release on
Mercury Records, the Orb embarked on their first tour of the United States beginning in
Phoenix, Arizona, in October 1991. In late 1991 and early 1992, Paterson and Weston wrote their next single, "
Blue Room". Assisting with the recording was bassist
Jah Wobble, keyboardist
Miquette Giraudy, and guitarist Hillage. performance on
Top of the Pops where Patterson and Weston played a game of
chess in space suits while footage of dolphins and an edited version of "Blue Room" ran in the background. In July 1992,
U.F.Orb was released featuring "Blue Room" and, in the US release, the Orb's next single, "
Assassin". Weston integrated his technical and creative expertise with Paterson's
Eno-influenced ambience on
U.F.Orb, combining "drum and bass rhythms" with "velvet keyboards" and "rippling synth lines". Because of this partial anonymity and the Orb's rotating membership, they are often recognised as more of a musical collective than a "band". Over the next year and a half, Paterson and Weston continued to produce "new" material, and the Orb left Big Life to sign a deal with
Island Records. Their first release on Island Records was the live album
Live 93, which gathered highlights from their recent performances in Europe and Asia. It featured the live crew of Paterson, Weston, producers Nick Burton and Simon Phillips, as well as audio engineer
Andy Hughes, who had stepped in previously when Weston had decided to stop touring. Though
Pomme Fritz reached No.6 on the British charts, critics panned it as "doodling". Island Records "hated it" and "didn't understand it at all", according to Paterson.
1995–2001: Paterson, Fehlmann & Hughes Following Weston's departure from the Orb, Thomas Fehlmann joined as a full-time studio member, but did not always participate in live performances. Paterson, Hughes, and Fehlmann then finished producing the album
Orbus Terrarum, on which Paterson and Weston had been working.
Orbus Terrarum, released in 1995, featured more "earthbound" and "organic" sounds than their previous trippy science-fiction-themed music.
Orbus Terrarum suffered, as Paterson described it, "a good kicking" at the hands of the British press, who described it as "generic" and a low point for Paterson's creativity.
Orbus Terrarum alienated many of the group's fans, and reached only No.20 on the British charts. American critics gave it great acclaim, including
Rolling Stone who made it their album of the month, citing its symphonic flow coupled with the Orb's "uniquely British wit". After a long world tour, the Orb, with Andy Hughes and Steve Hillage, settled down to produce their next album,
Orblivion—the process of which saw a return to their spacey sounds. Though
Orblivion was recorded in May 1996, it was not released until almost a year later, due to Island Records' desire to promote it as a follow-up to
U2's techno-rock album
Pop.
Orblivion sold well in Europe as well as the United States, where it reached the
Billboard Top 200. The first
Orblivion single, "
Toxygene", was the highest-charting single by the Orb, reaching No.4 in the United Kingdom on 8February 1997. Despite high sales,
Orblivion received a lukewarm reception from the British press. As with
Orbus Terrarum,
Orblivion was better received by American critics, including
Rolling Stone, who praised its "contrast of chaos and euphony". In 1997 the band sold their studio ''Joe's Garage
to the Godfrey brothers of Morcheeba. That same year, they contributed a cover of "Jo the Waiter" to the Gary Numan tribute album Random''. Paterson and Fehlmann, along with usual collaborators Hughes, Nick Burton, and Phillips, wrote and produced
Cydonia for a planned 1999 release. Island Records was in a period of restructuring due to its recent purchase by
Universal Music Group, and
Cydonia was not released until 2001. Upon release, critics noted that
Cydonia merged pop, trance, and ambient-dub music, which they felt to be a conglomeration of bland vocals and uninventive ambience that lacked the appeal of the Orb's earlier work.
NME harshly described it as "a stillborn relic, flawed throughout by chronically stunted ambitions" and describing its only appropriate audience to be "old ravers" seeking nostalgia. The Orb were generally regarded by the British press as past their prime and an "ambient dinosaur" out of place in the current dance music environment.
NME described the Orb's tour as "charming" and that they were "freed from the
Floydian pretensions that dogged the band throughout the mid-'90s". The Orb, now composed of Paterson, Phillips, and Fehlmann, with guest John Roome, accepted an invitation to join the
Area:One concert tour with
Moby,
Paul Oakenfold,
New Order and other alternative and electronic artists. Though the Orb were paired with more mainstream artists during the tour such as
Incubus, Paterson and Fehlmann made their next releases a series of several low-key EPs for German label
Kompakt in 2002. The Orb found critical success on Kompakt; but Badorb.com collapsed soon after releasing the compilation
Bless You. Badorb.com had released fourteen records over the course of fourteen months from artists including
Guy Pratt (Conduit),
Ayumi Hamasaki, and
Takayuki Shiraishi, as well as the Orb's three-track
Daleth of Elphame EP. Though Badorb.com was an internet-based record label, they sold only vinyl releases (with one exception, the Orb EP), which Paterson later remarked was a poor idea because "not many people... have record players". Though their musical style had changed somewhat since the 1990s, the Orb continued to use their odd synthetic sounds on 2004's
Bicycles & Tricycles, to mixed reviews.
The Daily Telegraph praised
Bicycles & Tricycles as being "inclusive, exploratory, and an enjoyable journey"; other publications dismissed it as "stoner dub" and irrelevant to current electronic music. Like
Cydonia,
Bicycles & Tricycles featured vocals, including rapper MC Soom-T who added a hip hop contribution to the album. The Orb left Island Records and released the album on
Cooking Vinyl and
Sanctuary Records. To promote the album, the band began a UK tour with dub artist
Mad Professor. Though the Orb still pulled in large crowds,
The Guardian noted that they lacked the intensity found in their earlier performances.
2004–2007: Paterson & Fehlmann, the Transit Kings After two more EPs on Kompakt, the Orb (now composed of only Paterson and Fehlmann) released ''
Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt'', which featured new material in addition to tweaked versions of their previous Kompakt output. Fehlmann's trademark hypnotic
loops and
delays made him the centre of
Okie Dokie production and, according to
Pitchfork Media, made it "difficult to say where [Paterson] is in the picture". The Orb's releases with Kompakt gained them back much of their musical credibility with the press and showed that they could "age gracefully". In August 2006, the founders of the Orb—Paterson and Cauty—released
Living in a Giant Candle Winking at God, their debut album as the
Transit Kings with
Guy Pratt and Pratt's associate, Dom Beken. The album featured appearances from
Smiths' guitarist
Johnny Marr and comedian
Simon Day. Beken described
Living in a Giant Candle Winking at God as "self-consciously musically written and less sample-based" compared to the members' previous work.
Living had been in production since 2001, but due to members' other obligations, it was delayed for several years. After the album's release, Cauty left the Transit Kings on "extended leave", leaving the project in indefinite limbo, Paterson and Beken reunited in 2008 as High Frequency Bandwidth, an ambient hip hop group on the
Malicious Damage label.
2007–present , Ireland, October 2025 The Orb's next studio album,
The Dream, was released in Japan in 2007 and the following year in the United States and United Kingdom. Fehlmann is absent on
The Dream and Paterson was instead reunited with Youth and joined by Tim Bran of
Dreadzone. The album saw a return to the Orb's sounds of the early 1990s, with peculiar vocals and playful samples. The Orb also brought in jazz and house music singer
Juliet Roberts and guitarist
Steve Hillage. A reunification of Paterson and long-term collaborator Thomas Fehlmann who last worked together on ''Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt
, the album was promoted with a launch party with Paterson and Fehlmann performing the whole album live at The-Situation Modern in Clapham, England on 10 September. Unlike the first 2 albums in the Orbsessions
series, which consisted of archive recordings, Baghdad Batteries'' comprised brand new material recorded at Fehlmann's Berlin studio. In 2011, Alex Paterson teamed up with producer
Gaudi and vocalist Chester Taylor for the creation of their experimental and ongoing collaborative project SCREEN, releasing the album
We are Screen by Malicious Damage Records. In 2012, the Orb worked with dub musician
Lee "Scratch" Perry to produce a reggae-infused album titled
The Orbserver in the Star House, which was recorded in
Berlin over a period of several months and features the single "Golden Clouds". The title song was based on an earlier version of
Little Fluffy Clouds, with the lyrics rewritten by Perry reflecting his childhood in Jamaica and the property
Golden Clouds near his home. In 2013, the Orb performed with the Kakatsisi drummers of Ghana on the West Holts stage at
Glastonbury Festival. On 22 June 2018, the Orb released their fifteenth studio album,
No Sounds Are Out of Bounds. During 2019, the Orb have been touring with a 30th anniversary tour, performed by Alex Paterson and London based producer/sound engineer Michael Rendall. The Orb released their sixteenth studio album,
Abolition of the Royal Familia, on 27 March 2020. It includes contributions from
Youth,
Roger Eno,
Gaudi,
David Harrow and Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy (
System 7). On 28 April 2023, The Orb released their seventeenth album,
Prism, on the
Cooking Vinyl label. The Orb collaborated with Chocolate Hills to produce the latter's second album, Yarns From The Cholocate Triangle, released 16 June 2023. On 10 October 2025 the Orb released their eighteenth studio album,
Buddhist Hipsters, on Cooking Vinyl featuring collabarations with Roger Eno, Youth, Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy, Andy Falconer,
Violeta Vicci,
Paul Ferguson, Andy Cain, Rrome Alone and Eric Von Skywalker. == Artistry ==