It's little known how particular the Pitchfork copy editors are. Though they're said to parse each review for illogicalities, flagrant lapses in concentration, and general sloppiness, they rarely concern themselves with write-ups of indie rock mainstays. In matters ambient and chill, though, they override even the editor-in-chief's judgment. Why should this be?
The copy editors' tasks are so crucifyingly dull that the only way to retain a knowledgeable and well-balanced team is to give each editor top-of-the-line headphones so that they may enjoy the soothing tones of chill-out discs while lazily perusing their articles. As a result of years of marking up copy while submerged in deep, deep chill, the copy editors have gained an acute knowledge of their preferred genre. The department recently voted Coco Steel and Lovebomb's Balearic ambient record Sun Set "the most chamomile disc of the 90's."
The department has been defection-free since Nathan Scrote, a fine interpreter of Brent DiCrescenzo's prose, left without a word after working himself into a caffeinated tizzy over Moby's "disrespectful" mixes of Brian Eno's "Fractal Zoom." But since that wet Wednesday afternoon, the team has remained cohesive and love-bound. It's almost as if they'd all drunk of Milton the Monster's tincture of tenderness.
Well, not quite. Rumors of disruption started up again on the Tuesday that the Orb's Cydonia was to be released. The editor-in-chief found fragments of vicious pink hi-lighter marker on the boardroom carpet. Elsewhere, red pencil shavings were scattered into Mrs Neshanigan's handbag-- what had the Pitchfork eurythmacist done to deserve such treatment?
An extensive report from the internal affairs department reported that the copy editors had taken premature and violent exception to Cydonia. Nonplussed at Aki Omori's vocals and doot-doot-doo's on "Once Again," the band's sixth album did not sit well with them. Their resented prevented further listening. In their resistance to anything other than another re-rerun of U.F.Orb, they never stopped to admire the breakbeat melodica dub of "Promis" or the rolling echoes and classically Orb-ular processing effects on the lilting "Ghostdancing."
Recalling Orbus Terrarum's "Slug Dub," "Turn It Down" concludes with an excerpt of a knighted Welshman telling tall tales of the local brewery's dark and powerful ale that sustained his generation through Nazi bombardment and forced rationing. Drifting in, possibly from some moments left off the Robert Fripp/Orb collaboration FFWD, "Egnable" is a Monty Python-esque monologue based on IKEA self-assembly instructions and upholstering manuals. After such headspace adventures, the Orb return to clubbier material with the Front 242 DMT trip of "A Mile Long Lump of Lard," and "1.1.1," which could have easily come off Krust's Coded Language. Cydonia closes with the circa 1989 "Terminus," a lengthy, spaced-out ambient trundle around the universe-- exactly the type of adventuring that distinguished them over a decade ago.
Though Cydonia is far from being a dull, sequencer-heavy Namlook ambient release, it regrettably sounds irrelevant in today's climate. No one will deny the importance of the band's first two albums, but by the time they released the frighteningly claustrophobic Orbus Terrarum, the glitch of Oval and the algorithm of Autechre had turned the electronic scene microscopically inward.
Out on the dancefloor, Dr Alex Patterson and his cohorts' "Land of Oz" chillout has little meaning to the kids who've made hard house and trance the world's most in-demand genres. The Orb now find themselves creating breakbeat tracks that can't fairly compare with the dangerous dark of Dave Tipper or Rennie Pilgrem. Cydonia will confuse those who haven't followed the band's advice ("An Orb is for life, not just for Christmas") and grown up with them. They'll rightly demand to know why these guys are considered pioneers. While it's so tempting to me, a longtime admirer of Dr LX journeying, to find all manner of excuses and apologies for the stalled and self-reminiscing Cydonia, I have to concede that it may be time for the Orb to make a Mir-like re-entry into Earth's atmosphere and collide with a Taco Bell sign in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
Alternatively, the Orb could cop a few moves from the similarly named Orbital, who've managed to remain strikingly meaningful over a similar length of time. Orb fans should reflect on why indie-apostates such as Radiohead have turned to Richard D James for guidance rather than Dr Patterson, whose love of Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream once seemed to chime perfectly with Radiohead's own.
The Kosmos would show sublime and gracious irony if some 'Crasher kid, twenty years hence, discovered Alex Patterson and decided to give him one more bite of celebrity pie, just as Patterson did for Gong's has-been guitarist, Steve Hillage. Encouraging such System 7 fantasies is, in fact, the primary recommendation of the Pitchfork Internal Affairs Division report on the unrest within the copy-editing department. After a few spins of The Water Album and 777, staffers' write-ups will once again be freed from the stranglehold of pendant participles.
