The Orb
No Sounds are Out of Bounds
Cooking Vinyl
The Orb’s been making weird bleeps and bloops to couple with trippy light shows for decades, and yet, with No Sounds are Out of Bounds, it sounds like Alex Paterson and his motley crew of guest stars are just digging into the possibilities of ambient house.
There are free-flowing horns on Ununited States that quickly dip into jazz and just as quickly back into shapeless tones. There are murky wompwomps (official musical term, for sure) that underlie Emma Gillespie’s soaring vocals. And there are the straightforward four on the floor drum beats that marks Pillow Fight @ Shag Mountain as the base of operations from which everything else takes flight.
I love it, even if it is particularly mood-specific. The whole damned thing sounds like a sex scene in a smoke-filled room with a round bed a shag carpeting. With that in mind, listen away.