Monday's Long Song

I was going through one of the shelves of CDs recently and rediscovered the compilations of remixes by The Orb, double disc CD albums titled Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty, a massive round up of remixes The Orb undertook in the 90s for other artists. Volume 1 came out in 1997 and took in Primal Scream, Killing Joke, Zodiac Mindwarp, Yello, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pop Will Eat Itself and a slew of others. Volume 2 came out four years later and threw The Orb's net even wider- Wendy And Lisa, Lisa Stansfield, The KLF, Robbie chuffing Williams, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Can, The Grid, System 7, Meat Beat Manifesto and Art Of Noise among others, and this one...

Towards The Evening Star (Mandarin Cream Mix)

Eight minutes of mid 90s Orb remixing the mighty Tangerine Dream, from the when Thrash had left and Andy Hughes was working as Alex Paterson's right hand man. The familiar Orb sheen and sampled voices are there, a lovely chuggy rhythm kicking in and washes of synth shifting from left to right across the speakers. It's a blurred area with Orb remixes to know where the original artist ends and The Orb begin- there's as much Orb in this as there is Tangerine Dream. By three and a half minutes in everything's cooking nicely, ambient house with the emphasis on house, chunky drums and bass. The radio/ TV voices return during the break down and then the drums thunder back in and its all systems go for a few more minutes before everything ends with a dust storm. 

The original track came out the year before on Tangerine Dream's Goblins' Club album, the German band's twenty fourth studio album. It's not a TD album I know- my TD knowledge is limited to Zeit, Phaedra, Rubycon and Force Majuere and I feel that on the whole that's enough. Apparently The Orb's remix was unsolicited and unofficial leaving TD's Edgar Froese both furious and litigious. The remix came out as a CD single paired with the original track so it's a bit odd that Edgar seemed to know nothing about it. Record company shenanigans maybe.