The Dream by The Orb
The Dream is the eighth studio album released by ambient techno group The Orb in September 2007(U.S. release 17 June 2008). The album features somewhat of a return to the earlier sound of the Orb (notably, "The Truth Is..." features the same vocal sample as the group's early-90s single, "Blue Room"), and shares much more in common with their 2004 album Bicycles and Tricycles than with their minimal 2005 release, Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt. The Dream was released in Japan in 2007 and the following year in the US and UK. Orb member Thomas Fehlmann was absent on the album and Paterson was instead reunited with Martin Glover and joined by Tim Bran of Dreadzone. The album features more of a return to The Orb's sounds of the early 1990s, with peculiar vocals and playful samples. The Orb also brought in jazz and house music singer Juliet Roberts, guitarist Steve Hillage, and Aki Omori, who had worked with The Orb on Cydonia.
“Before, I thought I ran on a chaos engine,” Florence Welch told the <i>Guardian</i> in June 2018, shortly ahead of the release of <i>High as Hope</i>. “But the more peaceful I am, the more I can give to the work. I can address things I wasn’t capable of doing before.” This newfound openness gives her band’s fourth LP an unvarnished vulnerability. “Hunger” will sit proudly among her most personal and beautiful songs, while “South London Forever” and “Grace” both make peace with the excesses that decorated her rise to fame. Such lyrical heft affords the Londoners a chance to explore a more delicate, restrained sound, but there’s still space for Welch to blow the roof off. A fiery confessional that majestically takes to the skies and forms the album’s centrepiece, “100 Years” uncorks some vintage Florence. No one, we’re reminded, chronicles sadness quite so exquisitely, or explosively.
