The Orb - A Huge Ever Growing Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (12" Orbital Dance Mix)
- 12 INCH VINYL
- May 26
- 3 min read
The Core, A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain Which Rules from the Centre of Ultraworld is the name of a sample featured on the BBC Sound Effects No. 26 - Sci-Fi Sound Effects album. It originates from the 1978–1981 show Blake's 7.
Blake's 7 also features a powerful computer called Orac, capable of accessing other computers and sometimes referred to in the programme as "the orb."
And so it was that in 1989, Dr Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty (also a member of The KLF) named themselves The Orb and titled their debut single A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of Ultraworld.
This seminal ambient house track began life as a live BBC John Peel session and was initially called Loving You, as it features a sample of Minnie Riperton’s Lovin’ You.
The ethereal choir-type sample heard throughout is from Grace Jones’s Slave to the Rhythm. A James Brown drum sample also appears later in the track.
Paterson and Cauty had formed The Orb the year before and were playing ambient soundscape DJ sets that blended obscure samples, sound effects and dub influences – most notably in the chill-out room at Heaven nightclub in London, where they had met.
Paterson had worked in the music industry throughout the 1980s, first as a roadie for Killing Joke, where he met Youth (Martin Glover) – the producer who would later collaborate with him in The Orb.
He also worked in the A&R department at EG Records, which handled Brian Eno, King Crimson and Robert Fripp, amongst others – all associated with ambient and progressive music.
Paterson later began DJing but, rather than playing dance music, chose to experiment with tape loops, sound collages and found audio.
He began collaborating with Cauty in 1988, including working with him on some records for The KLF, before the pair formed The Orb as a chill-out focused separate project.
Cauty left The Orb in early 1990, shortly after the underground success of this debut single, due to the rising profile of The KLF and because the pair did not want The Orb to be seen as an offshoot.
“It was never supposed to be The KLF mark two,” says Paterson. “We had different ideas about where things should go.”
A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain... was recorded at The KLF’s Trancentral studio in London. The sequences and arpeggios were created using an Oberheim OB-8 synthesizer – the same instrument used in The KLF’s What Time Is Love? – and the track is credited to Cauty and Paterson.
Cauty was replaced by Kris Weston (aka Thrash). Paterson had been impressed with Weston’s grasp of digital production tools, and the pair became the classic line-up of The Orb during their peak commercial period between 1990 and 1994.
The original version of the track clocked in at a remarkable 19 minutes and 7 seconds. Even more remarkable is that it isn’t even The Orb’s longest single – 1992’s Blue Room was 39 minutes and 58 seconds, just 2 seconds inside the then limit for the UK charts.
The version featured here – the Orbital Dance Mix – is much shorter at 8 minutes and 10 seconds, and is the version The Orb included on their best-of compilation.
Curiously, this isn’t actually a remix by Orbital, but a remix by The Orb themselves.
"Orbital" was simply The Orb’s naming convention for remixes at the time.
Coincidentally, Orbital released their debut single Chime shortly after The Orb released this track – so The Orb promptly abandoned this remix naming style to avoid confusion.
Year: 1989 Label: Big Life Cat no: BLR 27T
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