Release Date: Jun 10, 2008
Genre(s): Electronic
Record label: Six Degrees
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
The Orb's 2005 classic on the Kompakt label -- aptly titled Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt -- easily proved that Dr. Alex Paterson and company could hang with the techno avant-garde of the new millennium, taking the minimalist blueprint of many who had followed the Orb and delivering a great record within that context. The follow-up The Dream is just as good, but in a completely different way.
Reunited with salad-?days collaborator Thomas Fehlmann, Orb main man Alex Paterson is dreaming of better times, when raves were cool and people took so much E that “chill-out” DJs were in demand to help strung-out party kids come down. Sure, some will call this a return to form, but it’s a form that only really worked 15 or 20 years ago. While the dancehall-?inflected Dirty Disco Dub suffers from cheesy vocal samples, the second half of the record settles down into better but still well-?trod territory reminiscent of better Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.