The Orb featuring Lee Scratch Perry - The Orbserver in the Star House
- Written by Matt Jones
Being offered the chance to work with a living legend must be very flattering. When English pioneers of ambient house The Orb were approached by Lee Scratch Perry after a performance with him in Mexico in 2004, I bet they jumped at the opportunity. This is the man who produced Bob Marley, Junior Murvin and Max Romeo, after all. A living legend if ever there was one.
The problem with ‘living legends’ is that they don’t always speak sense, as Alan Sugar stands testament to. Although the seventy six year old Scratch is in no fit state to be picking twitter fights with Tulisa, The Orbserver sounds like the musical equivalent of Lord Sugar’s twitter feed.
Scratch’s opening line on ‘Ball of Fire’ is “I’ve got something to say!” – a declaration which we are unsure whether to believe. Throughout the album, Scratch does a great job of proving he has A LOT to say, but none of which makes any sense. As the opening track proceeds, the tone for the rest of the album is set - The Orb’s usually complex and enchanting electronic beats being brought down a notch by such senile ramblings as “Ball of fire, ball of fire, walls of fire and the walls of fire, ball of fire and the ball of fire”. Felhmann’s own words quoted from the PR piece for the album go some way to explain just how such tracks made the final cut:
“It was soon pretty clear that we wouldn’t get far with the four backing tracks we pre-produced… Lee was so overwhelmingly creative that it took an afternoon for those to be finished. From then on we were forced to come up with new beats on the spot, to keep him in the flow”.
Which roughly translates as:
“It was soon pretty clear that we wouldn’t get far with this album. Lee was so overwhelmingly nonsensical and off-key that we had to scrap the good stuff. From then on we were forced to come up with any old shit on the spot, to keep him happy”
The rest of the album certainly feels like this. ‘Golden Clouds’, a rework of The Orb’s most well-known hit, ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ supposedly sees Scratch nostalgically recounting his childhood in Jamaica, but does better proving that you can aurally diagnose tooth-loss. ‘Ashes’ sounds like a promising intro to a song that never kicks in. ‘Police & Thieves’ is supposed to turn Junior Murvin’s 1976 classic into “a dubwise vocal vehicle” for the new generation, but actually sounds like the reluctant result of the following conversation:
Scratch: Say boys, did I ever sing you that song I produced back in ’76?
The Orb: …several times, Mr. Perry. But you’ve had sixteen rum and ginger beers, and we really must get on with the recording-
Scratch: Oh! Let me sing it to you ONE more time…
I don’t like disrespecting my elders, especially ones that have produced a large proportion of my musical staple. But if you recently watched Britain’s Oldest Stand Up (Channel 4), then you’ll be familiar with the feeling of want-to-like-but-can’t-quite-manage-it that The Orbserver installs in its listeners. Still, it’s a laugh if little else and I can’t wait for Scratch’s Christmas song. Oh wait...