With its cover and title looking and sounding like a Crass record from the eighties, this is very different Orb than the cosmic warriors that bought us The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld all those years ago.
Abolition Of The Royal Familia has a message in its notes of Extinction Rebellion‘s fight to save the planet; a worthy theme, and certainly one worth shouting about. Unfortunately, the album is released amongst the global pandemic of Covid-19 and with few aeroplanes, very little car travel, businesses and work places closed, and thousands of people dying, the message feels a little out of step at this present time, whereas only a few weeks earlier it was still on people’s radar. Of course, when all this blows over the issue of saving the planet will return to the front line, but I wonder if it will be in the same form as before?
Abolition Of The Royal Familia samples many different artists, including Roger Eno, Steve Hillage, Youth and Miquette Giraudy among many others, though apparently a sample of Prince Charles had to be removed from the final mix of the album.
“Daze” is a psychedelic disco beat number that sounds straight from 1977, and it’s only the odd manipulation of the track that sends it straight into Orb territory, with a slightly unwell sounding essence to it, the familiar made unusual to make you think and readjust. “House Of Narcotics” gives us big beat with some fine sequenced synth that gives us a Giorgio Morodor-esque Munich Machine dance floor filler. “Hawk Kings”, a tribute to Professor Steven Hawking, takes us into more recognisable Orb territory as they use samples about black holes and a warm dance beat to take us in to a flight around the cosmos; here is what The Orb do really well: finely crafted ambient trance that gets you pulling out old cosmic disco records and blasting off into outer space.
Roger Eno’s piano sound is recognisable in the opening of the beautifully mellow “Shape Shifter (In Two Parts)”. A languid horn plays over this and conjures a similar feel to some of Sylvian’s Gone To Earth instrumental tracks, as well as Roger’s own music. Some analogue synth bubbles away to give a sense of the ethereal and a laid-back atmosphere. Halfway through the track, it changes in to full-blown dub reggae mode, with an obligatory throbbing bass beat and drum fills, and a light classic chord sequence that gets your head nodding along to it. “Say Cheese” has another reggae beat and almost seems like a continuation of the second half of the previous track, but if your head’s in that space it’s probably best it goes along for the ride. “Ital Orb” is full of more dub time signatures with some great speeding-up and slowed-down guitar samples and an uplifting melody.
“Queen Of Hearts” has plenty of vocal samples running over its electronic beat and some arpeggiated guitar notes that keep the track pulsing along. “The Weekend It Rained Forever” is a wonderful title for what again sounds like another Eno piano piece. It is really when The Orb get atmospheric like this is when I find them most interesting: the piece is beautifully crafted and has a slightly melancholic feel, hanging there with a sense of serenity, like sitting in a garden in late summer. “Slave Till U Die, No Matter What U Buy” finishes the album with a wash of ambient synths that hover in the air like autumn flies, its slight piano adding to the atmosphere of introspection as it drifts into an almost meditational mode until a “lockdown” sampled voice over happens in pure science fiction fashion, similar to some of Hawkwind’s space rants.The Orb’s seventeenth album is a step forward in sound, as all of their releases are. For me, the more ambient pieces worked better that the trance rhythms and dub tracks. It all still makes for an intoxicating brew and sounds something that The Orb always do so well.
-Gary Parsons-
