Went with my friend Nick to see The Orb at Concord 2 last night. The last time I’d seen the Orb was back in 2004, at the start of their relatively dry spell. That night, they’d been a bit lacklustre despite playing (some of) the hits and a relatively decent album in “Bicycles and Tricycles”. I left feeling that I’d seen the past rather than the future, something that I wouldn’t glimpse again in their records until 2015.

The Orb return with a new EP on the Kompakt label called “Alpine”. “Alpine” is split in to three tracks “Morning”, “Evening” and “Dawn”. The third of these was included on the 2016 edition of Kompakt’s annual “Pop Ambient” compilation, a gently drifting track with plenty of bells and yodels. A diversion from the sounds of Moonbuilding 2703 AD (and its presumably ongoing remixed companion EPs), but it sat nicely with the other tracks.

To reboot this series, Album Digest June 2015 features five fantastic albums from Hot Chip, Jamie xx, Blanck Mass, Holly Herndon, and The Orb. I could pick loads more as I’ve listened to a lot of albums since February but I decided to focus on the more electronic material. This means that I have no excuses for not continuing next month with a rockier theme. Hot Chip “Why Make Sense?” Hot Chip seem to be settling in to a pattern with their album releases, alternating between messy experimental affairs and then a state of the art correction.

Aphex Twin “Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt2 EP” Aphex Twin follows SYRO (reviewed in Album Digest September 2014 here) with this 27 minute EP of music that, if we take the title literally, features computers playing acoustic musical instruments. It’s a very different sound to SYRO and sounds acoustic for the most part. It’s an important experiment about the role of the musician, one that is already blurred in the creation of electronic music.

Or at least its subversive soundtrack… I listened to The Orb’s amazing live album “Live ’93” the other day (after discovering the insipid “History Of The Future” collection on Spotify) and I was amazed at how countercultural and subversive it was. I was listening to this stuff at the age of 14 and now that I’m old enough to be a parent, that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Actually it does nothing of the sort, because it’s frigging awesome.

FUN FACT: It was because of the artwork to this album that I obsessively scrawled onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome on my pencil case at school. I also had a very passable u.f.orb logo drawn on it too. In The Blue Room I had my first “close encounter” with The Orb in 1992 when the single Blue Room was in the charts.