The Orb – The Dream

Recent Orb albums have been kinda rough, starting with the label-delayed dry heave, Cydonia. Things recovered with Bicycles & Tricycles and it’s spine-crushing dub highlight, “Tower Twenty Three” – the unfortunate MC British Shouty Boringpants track “Aftermath” aside.

SIDETRACK: If American thesaurus rappers are difficult to deal with (and they are), then having the UK version of guidos try their hand at it is fifty times more irritating. Enough of that sort of thing has you wishing they’d hurry up with their experiment to become 1984: The Musical and just go fully totalitarian already. To be fair to the poor souls whose mp3 player is stocked with The Streets and other abominations, take heart – at least you’re not nerdcore fans! Oh hey Star Wars! Oh hey video games! Wow, the 80s! He’s rapping about things I care about! Isn’t this great?

Sure is, art school. Sure is.

And so we turn our hungry eyes back to The Orb.

Boris Live @ Webster Hall

Man, Webster Hall was gross as all get-go last night; a million sweaty beards glistened in the disco lights. We arrived too late to see Torche, whom I’ve heard described as a kind of stoner rock but I think is a bit more shopping at the mall than smoking t’weed. We also missed Clouds, whom I’d never heard of, but seem kinda snappy.

Boris? It had more than a dash of what I’d imagine seeing Great White in a California rock club would have been like in the 1980s. The drummer was a whoopin’ and hollerin’ throughout the first half of their set – playing their overdriven cock-rock anthems with a furious tightness, he kept pointing his drumstick in the sky, at which point the entire middle of the crowd would howl with delight. Being old and cynical, it was very funny. Watching him nearly fall off his drumset after picking apart his kit during the heavy wall closer was an interesting coda as well.