*** The Orb

ORBLIVION

(Island)

All the usual clichés about pomo techno apply to the music Englishman Alex Patterson makes with the Orb in all the expected ways. It's trippy, dub-inflected, atmospheric, and futuristic, with sampled bits of found sound (weather reports, squealing tires, House Committee on Un-American Activities speeches) cut and pasted against an ever-pulsing backdrop of electro-whirls, techno-blips, synth squiggles, and sequenced beeps.

Having returned to Earth on 1995's brazenly abstract organic-feeling Orbus Terrarum, only to find out that futuristic techno was gearing up to be the next big thing, Patterson captains his Orb back into the stratosphere on Orblivion. He's so comfortable gliding through synthetic atmospheres, chasing digitized vapor trails, and navigating webs of inwardly spiraling beats that even when the BPMs approach dance velocities on the accessible "Toxygene," the result still comes across as chill-out music. You could say Patterson and the pasty crew of his Starship Orb -- his number-one Andy Hughes and "floating member" Thomas Fehlmann -- invented the genre, but they didn't. Brian Eno conceived of this stuff more than a decade ago; the Orb just figured out a way to turn a profit by cutting the ambiance with jingle-jungle beats and Pink Floydian flavor crystals, then packing it all into a vacuum-sealed (spaceship) capsule.

-- Matt Ashare