BAGHDAD BATTERIES
{ORBSESSIONS VOLUME III}
AN ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOK
WITH STEREO SOUND

There’s always been two quite contrasting sides to The Orb’s centrifugal epicentre Dr Alex Paterson. One is the purveyor of hook-ridden songs laden with vocal toppings or memorable samples, as heard on last year’s delightful collaboration with Youth and Tim Bran, The Dream, which Alex describes as ‘pop’. The other is more serious, focusing primarily on the sound itself, noticeably rearing in the mid-90s almost as a reaction to The Orb’s initial success on under-rated masterworks like Orbus Terrarum.

This is when the good Doctor sets the controls beyond any Earthly confines and gets down to stratospheric sound painting and advanced sonic science, sprinkled with an avant garde disregard for conventional structures. These startling electronic odysseys are often hatched with long-time collaborator Thomas Fehlmann, The Orb’s Berlin connection who’s been there from the first album and last made his towering presence felt on 2005’s Okie Dokie album for the renowned Kompakt label, bastion of KOLN minimalmuzik. Such is the case with Baghdad Batteries where the pair have injected some of these breathtaking outings with a subterranean house pulse beamed up from the Earth’s core, resulting in a new form of space disco which sounds as old as time itself while brushed with the most future-pointed minimal techno shadows.

The title comes from a major archaeological find discovered in a village near Baghdad in 1936 dating back around 2,000 years to the Mesopotamian Parthian period and thought to be the world’s first primitive battery, used for electro-plating. The album is actually the third volume in Malicious Damage’s ongoing Orbsessions series, but whereas the previous two were compiled from nuggets trawled from the vaults, these are new tracks recorded at Thomas’ Berlin studio, which also provide the soundtrack for Austrian director Werner Boote’s film Plastic Planet. It rather recalls when Pink Floyd did the music for a film called More in 1969, which appeared as an album in its own right to great success and is a brilliant move for The Orb.

The opening Styrofoam Meltdown rains in with similar sense of extra-terrestrial shock and awe which would levitate the heart-strings when The Orb revved up their live shows with O.O.B.E. in the early 90s, a kind of heavenly carwash explosion of interstellar frequencies which here sees the inter-acting pulses joined by kick drum, even, at one point, invoking the ghost of Giorgio Moroder’s I Feel Love. Chocolate Fingers starts as a beatless floater drenched in shimmering keys and shining melodic strands setting off an aural firework display, stun-quotient doubled when the chord changes kick in. The title track is gorgeously haunting as marimba tones melt over swirling effects before one of the highlights – the pastoral Raven’s Reprise, a poignant tribute to the late Killing Joke bassist. This celestial electronic space symphony is followed by another… oh bollocks, they’re all highlights! Dolly Unit is a dense, throbbing tech-flavoured pulser, sprayed with bluesy guitar peelings, giving way to an ancient rock steady beat before the muted house shuffle of Super Soakers. The beat carries on into Suburban Smog, deploying spaced tribal percussion and lush, organic ambience. Big Hammond chords highlight Orban Tumbleweed before the spoken interlude of Pebbles. Old mucker Max Loderbauer from Sun Electric came in on the breezy sax and bleep vamp of Woodlarking while the creaking resonance of OOPA takes the album out – actually a non-movie nugget first released on noted German electronic Skitkatapult last year [the initials stand for Out Of Place Artefact].

There’s a very special atmosphere to this album: two men bouncing ideas and exploring in classic Orb style to make a classic Orb album, hitting the magic place Alex always strives for, but this time with a lustful vengeance tempered with new gentleness and a movie in their heads.

tracklisting:
01 styrofoam meltdown 03:45
02 chocolate fingers 05:13
03 baghdad batteries 05:09
04 raven’s reprise 04:12
05 dolly unit 05:01
06 super soakers 08:42
07 suburban smog 06:51
08 orban tumbleweed 03:32
09 pebbles 01:08
10 woodlarking 03:47
11 OOPA 06:12


ANDY HUGHES 1965-2009 RIP
we're really really sorry to announce that andy passed away on 12th june

we worked together recently when andy mastered baghdad batteries and we were both really looking forward to a few beers together after the summer when the album is released and both our workloads had lightened a bit

sadly that won't happen now and he'll be sorely missed by all who knew him

anyone wishing to make a donation on andy's behalf to the Liver Intensive Therapy Unit, Kings College Hospital can do so HERE

ORBSESSIONS VOLUME TWO
at last the second volume of the orbsessions trilogy has been compiled and mastered and designed... it's another manic dip into the archives and ranges from spherical bliss to orbular madness... featuring paterson, fehlmann, roedelius, hughes, vin100 and youth... and of course the regular luscious malicious packaging...

tracklisting: D.A.D.O.E.S?, ralph’s cupboard, 2026, shem, shem version, it’s a small world, the giant bolster, ba’albeck, jam on your honey, kidnap, angel 4 matrix...
turtle running time 1:15:58

===================================
orbsessions volume one
this is the glorious first volume of previously unreleased orb treasures from alex paterson’s spherical archives, covering fifteen years of conspiracy and collaboration with some of the biggest names in electronic music including
j cauty, a hughes, t fehlmann, n walsh,
f le gonidec, v mcdonald, g pratt, d beken,
a omori and j roome all beautifully packaged in the usual malicious stylee with holographic printing, bright and colourful inserts and four unique badges unavailable anywhere else in the world and at this price you can afford two!! mummie don’t/sail/yungle/chromatik [orbzone]/eurofen/sun of/73.5 feat. nitram/steel horse/something like/pluto calling [twinkle]... total running time 57m 49s
MD603 £11+p&p

orbsessions on vinyl!!
this is a chunky see through vinyl double album in a beautiful sleeve but because of its weight we've had to fiddle about with the price and add a supplement as the postage calculates automatically by percentage...
so it works out as follows:
MDV604
uk: £12 + £1 + £1.95p&p = £14.95
europe: £12 +£2 + £2.80p&p = £16.80
world: £12 +£4 + £4.00&p = £20.00

battersea shield
the orb v meat beat manifesto
this sonic trip to insanity and beyond sees alex 'orb' paterson in cahoots with jack dangers
& lynn farmer of meat beat manifesto
- one of the most influential and experimental set-ups ever to hit the dance floor - in an audio explosion of spherical-industrial-dub-electro-techno-funk delights

and it's all beautifully presented in an embossed round tin based on the celtic design of the original battersea shield

this is the only place you can get the gold edition [the shop one's are silver]

the independent said:
..matron blends brittle drum with subterranean bass, cycling synth arpeggios and a collage of vocal sounds from whispers to laughter... on 1855 vocal fragments spread over a bricolage of percussive sounds and electronic noise with a dub-reggae mood... insane builds to a climax ofpounding backbeat, wriggling synth-lines and screams of "i'm insane!!"…

MD600 £10+p&p
matron/1855bc/insane
total running time: 32m 24s