Orb, The - A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld

I think this has to be the definitive mix of A Huge Ever Growing Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld. Lovely washing synth sounds, and the sound of waves crashing. After 14 miutes of soothing sounds a beat does emerge, but it doesn't get heavy, and just fades out again.

Listening to this is 19 minutes of time well spent!...You'll feel a lot calmer afterwards!

Ever wondered about the origins of that absurdly long title? Well, being devotees of the ever-useful BBC Sounds Effects series of LPs, they pinched it from the tracklisting on the album "Science Fiction Sound Effects No.26" (BBC REC 420, as if you're interested). It refers to a bit of F/X wizardry by Elizabeth Parker heard in the cult TV series "Blake's 7". The Orb may have made this particular title their own, but "Machine Monster With A Black Sense Of Humour (Who Chases Our Heroes Around, Winking)" remains up for grabs.

dance mixes! from a time when Jimmy Cauty was still involved in the Orb. Then the battle began.
With the heaping mass of Minnie Rippertons Loving You gently pasted into the intro this is a lead off song for the dj. Skip them and head for the Aubrey mix, which appears later in the aubrey edition of the album.
62,020,800 BPY (beats per year)
A nice example of an early Designers Republic sleeve greets you when flipping past this one.

I must say that I was suprised to see that this record had a FIVE prior to my rating it. It's a classic to be sure, but it's not a FIVE in my mind. I have been collecting the Orb's music since 1991 when someone popped in a U.F.Orb cassette(!) on the way home from a rave. What disappoints me most about the Orb is that their popularity has been slowly dwindling for years, while they have continued to release music of a much higher quality than their ealier releases. It just makes no sense. So in my mind, the Orbs earlier releases must be looked at in the context of their entire catalogue, which is vast to say the least.

Having said all that, I am fully aware that this record usually has the term "classic" applied to it. If I look at it as being from 1990, I can see where it could be viewed as original and groundbreaking, I'm just not sure it's worthy of the "classic" moniker.

The Aide A track was very inovative at the time of it's release. 20 minutes in length with long passages of "ambience" (i.e. - no beats). The ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne swirling keyboard riff that repeats at different tempos through out the track can be very calming or, very annoying, depending on your mood. The Minnie Ripperton "Loving You" sample that used to bring a little smile to my face now just makes me want to hear the Minnie Ripperton song. I do still quite enjoy the use of the helicopter like beat and the horse hooves as percussion.

The B-side mixes sound equally dated to me, but as with the A-side, they are still enjoyable in the context of early Orb and early ambient house music. I believe that these mixes are still exlusive to this 12" (could be wrong) which may be a good enough reason for collectors to hunt this down (but again, be careful as I am fairly certain it was released more than once with the same packaging). However, AHEPBTRFTCOTU has been released MANY times on CD. Most of the mixes don't get too far away from the original A-side included on this 12" release. So for casual listeners, hunting down a CD will be much easier and usaully (unless you get the CD5) allow you to listen to some other Orb songs as well.

I should add that I recall enjoying one of the B-side mixes much more that the other, but I cannot remember which one. Looking at the song titles is not helping so I will just say that one of the B-side mixes in considerably better than the other. It's very up and danceable.