Wonderful words by the ever erudite Adam Turner.

The Orb’s Dr. Alex Paterson is in the midst of a creative purple patch, a late career stream of releases by his long-standing ambient house group and a clutch of side projects. In the summer of 2021 he reunited with original Orbman, Andy Falconer, who co-wrote and engineered parts of Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld back in 1991, and as Sedibus they released The Heavens, a six track exploration of immersive ambient sound and space. It was totally engaging and fresh, rooted in early Orb, but with a modern feel too. Now, four years later, they’ve gone beyond the heavens and headed out into the expanse with a second album, SETI (SETI has a dual meaning – the Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, but also an item of furniture, something to sit on, quite possibly while getting stoned).

There are just five tracks, the opening pair totalling 20 minutes between them and the final three coming in at a similar combined length. For starters, Paradise sets out slowly and gently; a collage of synth, FX, and twinkles, all gradually pulling together, like gasses forming. At around nine minutes a sax appears, as if, having left orbit, the crew of a space shuttle have abandoned their scientific mission and embraced jazz. Then some piano drifts in, and some singing. As the second track, Purgatory, slides into earshot there are some typically Paterson vocal samples: radio announcers dropped in, along with excerpts of BBC shows, plummy 1950s voices, and xylophone theme tunes. Washes of synth and dancing strings also weave their way through. Suddenly some Nyabinghi-style drumming appears. There’s an ebb and flow, and a sense of motion, the chug of ambient house rediscovered. We are moving, slowly drifting, but moving.

Alex has said that this album is deliberately “musical” ambience, rather than “drone” ambience. The use of acoustic instrumentation along with the synths and samples a way to extend what they did thirty-three years ago, and what they did on The Heavens. A way to find some new creative ground. Piano and strings are scattered throughout the album, along with the space and radio samples, and they combine to give a sense of the cosmos, of exploration, of the infinite nature of space, elements bouncing around, beamed outwards, forever boldly heading into the distant beyond.

SETI Parts 1, 2 & 3 form a suite. Part 1 marks the departure with treated textures and instruments, and travels toward a long ringing oscillation. Part 2 features a fellow talking about ‘the institute’, a body working with NASA looking for extra-terrestrial radio signals. Then more ritual drumming kicks back in, a stuttering, buzzing synth riff begins, and there are more voices ricochetting around. ‘Was Jesus an alien?’, one asks. ‘I’m gonna go with “No”, he was just a really cool guy’, a woman replies. After the weightlessness of Part 1, this is practically dance music, rhythms at the centre of it, and the pianos now hinting at classic late `80s house. Part 3 wraps SETI up, with the thrum of an acoustic guitar and some drama injected into proceedings. If this were the soundtrack to a film (and who’s to say it isn’t?), this is the breakthrough moment, the narrative arc concluded. The sunrise a spectacle through a spaceship window. The crew safe and sound at mission’s end.

Sedibus’ SETI can be preordered directly from Orbscure Recordings. 

You can find more proper, on point, prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area. Adam is also part of the admin team at the mighty Flightpath Estate.

Adam and I both wrote reviews of SETI. Adam’s takes priority, but since I was moved, especially by the “Saturn” segment, I’ve included an edit of my effort….

“The mood here is more than mellow. While there are sections suitable for dancing – hand drums, tumbling tabla, tribal, progressive house, and sometimes a reggae / bogle beat – SETI is largely a blissed-out, deeply textured listen. A spirit-lifting, synapse-massaging, serotonin-releasing, sonic yoga stretch, where instruments are treated so that the sources – guitar, horns, keys, and a sampled xylophone run – are sometimes only glimpsed. Cut up into pretty counterpoint, patterns that could be Celtic or African, in places they echo the piece of Pat Metheny & Steve Reich that The Orb’s classic Little Fluffy Clouds was once based upon. In the background, repurposed vintage music hall and radio broadcasts – a World Service warbling – and light opera lifts, provide a warm, bubbling, bucolic, babble / babel. The darker, more like drone-like moments, invoke the endless, infinite void of Tangerine Dream’s Zeit, and the music of the spheres, but within the growling LFOs they are still somehow “organic”, orchestral, symphonic, and harbour human voices, harmonies. The more obvious documentary dialogue describes a Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, signals, and life, a desire for communication, and then conspiracies and government cover-ups. To be honest, I found it truly touching that Alex is still optimistically dreaming of, and reaching for, the stars. At one stage a narrator scientifically shares how Saturn’s rings are shaped by gravity, the influence of its moons. The poignancy of the accompanying piano, though, seems to suggest a secondary meaning, about how we ourselves evolve, are defined, by the pull and the push of the people in our orbit. The folks we meet…”

Rob