Orbs Of Light’s Billion Days has been around for a while. It was first scheduled for release, as a 5-track 12, on Mind Fair’s Rogue Cat Sounds back in 2021. The Leeds-based duo, of Baz Bradley and A Girl Called Kate, were also due to play live at The Rotation Summer Garden Party – as part of a packed line-up that included Phil Mison and Donna Leake. They roped me in to pen the press release, and even made a promo video…

We all prematurely thought that the pandemic was over, and lockdowns a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the continuing COVID crisis got the weekend cancelled, and as a consequence also put paid to the E.P. Billion Days, however, has now resurfaced as a 12 on Leng.

The original features falsetto harmonies, timbales, and twisted steel pan chimes that speak of tropical climes, summer holidays, romance, and heartbreak. Its longing lyric lamenting a distant lover, wishing on stars, and its percussive shuffle perfect for a hand-in-hand shoreline stroll at sunset. 

Where the OG is polite pop, beautiful, beatific, bucolic, Balearic, Mind Fair’s remix is a ruder digidub rub, built about a bossy bionic bass-line. The song just a memory, a chorus caught in echo. Bongos and congas colliding. 

The tone of San Francisco trio 40 Thieves’ take is slightly more spritely. The pitch a tad perkier, and the chug considerably more chunky. The bottom end bumping as keys cascade like comets` tails amidst fragments of fluttering flute. The groove gradually growing to include gentle lysergic licks, microdosed TB-303 tickles.

Orbs Of Light’s Billion Days is out now on Leng.