I've owned this album for over ten years now and it remains one of my favorites by The Orb.
Reading reviews of many of The Orb's albums on Amazon, I find interesting the different approaches which listeners have to this style of music. There are those who like the solid dance rhythms and find the more spacey tracks incoherent and washy. At the other end of the spectrum are those who love the dreamy spaceouts and find the excessive trance beats monotonous and unimaginative.
I admit I am one of the latter. I think it is for that reason I only tend to like half of an Orb album, at best. The track 'Montagne D'Or' demonstrates this Jekyll & Hyde quality to the music, starting off as a wonderful drifting dreamscape and deteriorating (in my opinion) into a tedious rhythm that I have difficulty getting through.
Orbus Terrarum has a couple of standout 'dreamy spaceouts' in Valley and Plateau. I never tire of listening to these tracks, even after a decade.
'Slug Dub' is quirky to start, but again, ho hum, there's the boring thump thump thump again.
I have finally decided, after all this time, that the thing about one of Alex Paterson's albums is not to expect to like all of it. What I like, I will generally enjoy a great deal, what I dislike, I will hate just as passionately.
And my black will probably be someone else's white.
I've owned this album for over ten years now and it remains one of my favorites by The Orb. Reading reviews of many of The Orb's albums on Amazon, I find interesting the different approaches which listeners have to this style of music. There are those who like the solid dance rhythms and find the more spacey tracks incoherent and washy. At the other end of the spectrum are those who love the dreamy spaceouts and find the excessive trance beats monotonous and unimaginative. I admit I am one of the latter. I think it is for that reason I only tend to like half of an Orb album, at best. The track 'Montagne D'Or' demonstrates this Jekyll & Hyde quality to the music, starting off as a wonderful drifting dreamscape and deteriorating (in my opinion) into a tedious rhythm that I have difficulty getting through. Orbus Terrarum has a couple of standout 'dreamy spaceouts' in Valley and Plateau. I never tire of listening to these tracks, even after a decade. 'Slug Dub' is quirky to start, but again, ho hum, there's the boring thump thump thump again. I have finally decided, after all this time, that the thing about one of Alex Paterson's albums is not to expect to like all of it. What I like, I will generally enjoy a great deal, what I dislike, I will hate just as passionately. And my black will probably be someone else's white.