aaamusic | On 20, Aug 2012

From the moment The Orb’s multi-hued spacecraft careered off the launch-pad, this has been a collision begging to happen: a full collaboration with Lee Scratch Perry, one of reggae’s greatest pioneers and personalities.

Recorded in Berlin over the last few months, THE ORBSERVER in the star house sparks with a rare magic as Dr. Alex Paterson and long-time Orb member Thomas Fehlmann construct a panorama of perfect, stripped-down backdrops for the Upsetter’s inimitable pronouncements, righteous declarations and sweet vocals.

The Orb have long been known for an assimilation of deepest dub into their stratospheric sonic innovations, as evidenced on U.F. Orb’s Towers Of Dub, itself something of a Lee Perry tribute with its sound effects and distinctive underlying eccentricity. Starting in the late 60s with The Upsetters, Perry wrote the book on Jamaican mixing desk trickery, then constantly ripped it up to create new aural blueprints for the music, via his Black Ark productions of the following decade. He has since then charted a waywardly idiosyncratic path, which has ensured legions of followers absorbing his every move.

As Lee states on the album, he was an instigator of the punky reggae crossover, working with the likes of The Clash and The Slits. With Alex’s punk roots, this was a union which could work just as well on the street as in the stars.

The albums inception can be traced back to 2004 when Dr. Paterson played a DJ and toaster set with Lee in Mexico. “I had an amazing time being that close to the great man,” enthuses Alex. “I played a dub set, Earl 16 was Greg Dread’s toaster, Mad Professor had his ladies, then there was the legendary Lee Scratch Perry; he’s a genius who expresses the future within the present times of anguish, hope and unity.”

Meanwhile, Thomas has been at the forefront of Germany’s electronic music scene since his days of avant foraging with Palais Schaumburg in the late 1980s, becoming part of Berlin’s rapidly-evolving techno underground, working with Sun Electric and many of the city’s major artists and operations, including the mighty Kompakt.

Thomas’ immaculate electronic knowledge and intuition now had two disparate lightning rods to bounce between; he recalls, “I met Lee for the first time during this session and it was pretty touching to see how an unexpected connection and inspirational exchange could so awaken our creative juices. Alex and I had never made so much new music on the spot before. It was soon pretty clear that we wouldn’t get far with the four backing tracks we pre-produced for the session. Lee was so overwhelmingly creative that it took an afternoon for those to be finished. From then on we were forced to come up with new beats on the spot, to keep him in the flow.”

“He was constantly active, referring to the tunes we were working on and hitting bits of wood or stone to create percussion patterns, so we ended up using field recordings of him banging on bits and pieces,” Fehlman adds.

Scratch’s vocals glide distinctively over bass-heavy monsters such as Soulman and Man In The Moon, the most overt Orb-dub behemoth on the set, while Don’t Rush takes the ridim form then dismantles it in subterranean sonic catacombs. House grooves inflect H.O.O. and Ashes, while a funky slide bass-line percolates under Thirsty. Hold Me Upsetter sparkles with lovely bass-string interplay and Congo brings in rolling banks of African percussion.

Both parties rework one of their classics; Police And Thieves, the track which Perry produced for Junior Murvin in 1976, is turned into a dubwise vocal vehicle, while The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds is reshaped as the hallucinogenic dancehall clatter of Golden Clouds.

“Looking back now those spontaneous jams we did became the most successful tunes”, recalls Thomas, “in that they were created under the influence of the situation. They all had a powerful, magic drive we felt was owed to a truly inspiring collision of our three planets.”

The mouth-watering prospect of a true master working with long-time acolytes who tuned into his unique wavelength long ago, blossoms and explodes on THE ORBSERVER in the starhouse, which, in the best Scratch and Orb tradition, often takes music to where it’s never been before.

Lee Scratch Perry began making music in the late 50s for Clement Coxsone Dodd’s label. Following a stint at Joe Gibbs’s Amalgamated Records, Perry formed his own imprint, Upsetter, in 1968.

In the early 1960s, Lee’s mixing board experiments resulted in the creation of dub. He is synonymous with his innovative production techniques and renowned for his studio band The Upsetters.

In 1973, Perry built The Black Ark studios, where he produced records for iconic musicians like Bob Marley & the Wailers, Junior Byles, Junior Murvin, The Heptones, The Congos and Max Romeo.

By 1978 The Black Ark had fallen into a state of disrepair and eventually, the studio burned to the ground; Perry insists that he torched the studio himself in a fit of rage.

Perry has recorded with Keith Richards, The Beastie Boys, George Clinton, David Lynch, Andrew WK, Moby, Ari Up of The Slits, Bill Laswell, Tunde Adebimpe (TV On The Radio), Sly Dunbar, Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt, Adrian Sherwood, Mad Professor and porn star Sasha Grey.

Lee’s song Enter the Dragon was sampled by Panda Bear from Animal Collective. He was then selected by A.C. to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties, which the band curated in 2011.

Rolling Stone Magazine featured Perry in their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Although 74 years old, Lee is fit, sprightly and at a creative peak. He divides his time between Jamaica and in Switzerland.

Dr. Alex Paterson is a Battersea resident, punk & acid house veteran, and founding member of The Orb. His career started as a roadie for seminal post punks Killing Joke, for whom his childhood friend Martin ‘Youth’ Glover played bass.

Alex met future KLF member Jimmy Cauty and the duo began DJ-ing together as The Orb. They started a residency at feted London club night The Land of Oz, and their sonic collage style of DJing soon morphed into making records. Then, in 1988 Alex and Youth put together the seminal acid house/Balearic label WAU! Mr. Modo Records.

Members of The Orb have been fluid over the years, with Alex remaining the constant throughout.  He has collaborated with Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Steve Hillage (Gong), Jah Wobble (PiL) and Robert Fripp (King Crimson).

In 1990, the Alex and Youth incarnation of The Orb released the bona-fide classic Little Fluffy Clouds, which borrowed a sample from Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, and transported it to another dimension. 1992  saw the single Blue Room reach # 8 in the British charts, with the band famously playing chess on-stage for Top of the Pops.

Longplayers The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and U.F.Orb, are often cited as seminal classics and the latter reached #1 in the British album charts in 1992. Alex Paterson also co-wrote the peerless Higher Than The Sun by Primal Scream. THE ORBSERVER in the star house will be the Orb’s 13th studio album.

Thomas Fehlman’s creative journey began fully in 1976, when he studied at the Hamburg Art Academy under world-renowned artist Sigmar Polke.

In ’79 he released several tracks on the Das Ist Scheonheit compilation, produced under the supervision of Tangerine Dream and Kluster musician Conrad Schnitzler. Following that, Fehlman founded the new wave/avant garde band Palais Schaumburg. The band disbanded in 1984, when Thomas moved to Berlin. In 1985 he released his debut solo 12″ as the sample-heavy Ready Made.

In ’88 Thomas founded the label Teutonic Beats, then took part in the Kunstdisco Project (at the Goethe Institute) in Seoul/Korea during the Olympics. In ’89 he produced dancefloor classic Moving by Marathon, which reached # 1 in the UK dance charts. That year he also began his ongoing partnership with the Orb.

He has worked on the following Orb releases: Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, U.F.ORB , Orbus Terrarum, Okie Dokie, it´s The ORB on Kompakt, the Plastic Planet soundtrack Baghdad Batteries and THE ORBSERVER in the star house.

Thomas has either produced, remixed or collaborated with Juan Atkins, Blake Baxter, Underground Resistance, Eddie ´Flashin´ Fowlkes, Erasure, Klaus Schulze, Einstürzende Neubauten, Depeche Mode, Sigur Ros and Moritz Von Oswald (half of Basic Channel / Maurizio). He’s released records on labels including Kompakt, R&S, Apollo and Plug Research.

Fehlman was also one quarter of FFWD – the collaborative album also featuring Alex, Kris Weston and Robert Fripp. Additionally, Thomas recorded the soundtrack for the monumental documentary 24hours Berlin, and produced and staged a piece in Montreal based on Mahler’s First Symphony, on invitation by the Symphony Orchestra Montreal and Kent Nagano.