This absolutely seminal album begins with the rooster crow of The Orb's first major hit, 'Little Fluffy Clouds', a charming song driven by rolling, tumbling percussion, honey-coated melodies, and the center piece, the sampled voice of Rickie Lee Jones from an interview in which she spoke glowingly of the eponymous little fluffy clouds of Arizona in her youth. There's such a timelessly dreamy character to this song; it holds up well even decades later. — Soundblab
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Little Fluffy Clouds [1990]
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The most famous of the samples used here is from an interview with singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, most famous for her 1979 hit Chuck E.’s In Love, but an artist with a unique back catalogue. She was asked “What were the skies like when you were young?” All credit to Jones here, as I’m sure most of us would not give as full an answer, as she paints a vocal picture of the colours and impressions of her childhood skies. Problems arose when Jones’ record company objected to their artist being used as the basis of somebody else’s song, despite the fact that it is not possible to copyright interviews.
The resultant court case saw The Orb banned from using Jones’ voice when playing live, until a verdict was reached. Live recordings from this period capture the band showing a complete disregard for the ruling, using samples from the interview extensively. When the case was settled and the sample cleared for use, The Orb, contrarians to the last, performed the song without the samples, as if to demonstrate that they could have done this all along if they had wished. It is worth pointing out that Jones herself had no objections to her voice being used, reportedly telling her record company “What the hell you doin’? This is good!” — Get Into This
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Earth (Gaia) [1991]
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Beginning life as ambient and dub DJs, mainstay Alex Patterson and then Orb member Jimmy Cauty were offered the dream job of playing the chill out room at Paul Oakenfold’s Land of Oz night at London’s Heaven. Post rave ambient music could be seen as a strange idea, being essentially dance music you can’t dance to and although the chill out room was initially something of a cult concern, the room’s popularity increased over the course of The Orb’s residency. — Get Into This
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Perpetual Dawn [1991]
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Perpetual Dawn merges punchy Reggae synth stabs with club-compatible beats and is otherwise loaded with cylon countdowns, vocoded show tunes, Hammond organ-interspersed Peppermint Twist fragments, samples of laughter and cacophonous flute tones. The energetic shakers and pumping beats make this a great Space Reggae skit that works as marvelously in this version as it does on the vocal take featuring Shola Phillips [note: the version above]. It's definitely one of my favorite tracks with a poignant video of another bunch of dolphins and skeletons (!) running through aqua-colored landscapes of clouds – your average 90's in a nutshell! — AmbientExotica.org
WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Shaquille O'Neal, Maisie Peters
Jimmy Fallon: John Cena, J Balvin
Stephen Colbert: Sarah Paulson, Kacey Musgraves
Seth Meyers: Amanda Peet, Paula Pell
James Corden: Dr. Phil McGraw, Teddy Swims
SPOILER WARNING
A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death.
So last Saturday’s Another Saturday Night theme as Songs About Girls. Totally forgot about this one even though I’d been listening to it a couple of weeks ago. Great pop song.
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Sean Kingston :: Beautiful Girls [2007]
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LAST WEEK’S POLL: IS IT OKAY TO PUT PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA?
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Picks
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