Collaborators and co-conspirators, both within and outside of the project’s inner sanctum, have come and gone, but key man Alex Paterson has been one constant throughout the project’s 30-year-plus evolution.
Paterson’s capacity
for fruitful collaboration is again to the fore on this latest Orb release, and
along with current primary partner in crime, Michael Rendall, Abolition of the
Royal Familia features heavyweight contributions from electronic scene veterans
like Steve Hillage, Roger Eno (Brian’s bro), Youth, David Harrow, Gaudi, and
most notably on ‘Daze’, vocalist Andy Caine.
The music itself
is an expansive journey into disco, deep house, Floydian ambience, dub, and
sampling. There’s politics, humour, plus hybrid themes of a post-apocalyptic
nature, including on-point use of Jello Biafra’s spoken word ‘Message From Our
Sponsor’ on the particularly poignant closer, ‘Slave Till U Die No Matter What
U Buy’.
All tracks have
relatively long-winded “remix” tags in their respective titles, presumably to
help differentiate them, eventually, from any yet-to-be-released alternative
mixes that may or may not be destined to follow. But they’re all brand new
tracks, and simply calling each “the original mix” is hardly very Orb-like is
it?
More generally,
Abolition of the Royal Familia captures the essence of Paterson’s long-held
commitment to a cross pollination of dance music styles, and it’s a no-skip
listen from start to finish. Pretty much everything you’d expect from a new Orb
album in 2020.
Aside from the
aforementioned tracks, both of which are doozies, my own favourites here are
the dubbier numbers, ‘Say Cheese’, and the “too blessed to be stressed” mix of
‘Ital Orb’.
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