On 3rd September this year, The Orb and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry are set to release a collaborative album entitled The Orbserver In The Star House. Recorded over the past few months in Berlin, it found them journeying into the resonance chamber together, for an album that delves deep into both’s interests and histories in dub and studio trickery. You can listen to the first track to emerge from the album, ‘Hold Me Upsetter’, and watch its video, above. The track is also available for free download at The Orb’s website.
The album had its roots in a bill that The Orb’s Dr. Alex Paterson shared with Perry in Mexico in 2004. “I had an amazing time being that close to the great man,” he says. “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.”
Fellow Orb man Thomas Fehlmann, by contrast, only met Perry for the first time when they met up to write the album, a process which proved unexpectedly intense and fruitful. "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,” he says. “[Perry] 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."
The album also finds both reworking one of their old tracks, with a version of Perry’s ‘Police & Thieves’ paired up with ‘Golden Clouds’, a rework of The Orb’s ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’.
