Newsgroups: alt.rave From: sfwhite@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen F. White) Subject: the orb orbiting montreal, a hypermedia review Keywords: orb, review, concert, WWW, Mosaic, hep, phat, buzzword, groovy! Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 03:31:25 GMT better late than never, eh? this is part of a larger hypermedia record of my trip to montreal, which can be experienced on the web using mosaic, using the following url to start: gopher://descartes.uwaterloo.ca/h0/mathSOC/.csc/.www/.sfwhite/montreal1.html *** if you can, read it on mosaic! it's much cooler. *** this is a simple text dump of the HTML document, so it's not nearly so happening. however, for you poor sods without mosaic, here it is: THE ORB LIVE IN MONTREAL _________________________________________________________________ Just before leaving, Mike had handed me a neat flyer for the Orb show, that was 4 panels which folded over to the exact size of a CD insert (maybe to put into the bootleg of the show? :^) The four of us, (Mike, Karen, Bill/Hobbes and I) entered Metropolis at around 10PM. It was _packed_, and the hardcore was a-poundin'! On the stage was either DJ Lewis or Dominic Woosey, I'm not sure which. I admit I'm not up to date on the latest sounds, but what he was spinning for most of the night was pretty neat; fast, four-on-the-floor beats, aggressive but not distorted, with many, many layers of synched filter sweeps and the like. HardTrance perhaps? Nevertheless, a neat sound. The Orb took the stage at about midnight, just after a new pre-taped Orb song (Plateau, perhaps?) was played on the P.A. The lightshow was mostly a bank of varilites (they didn't look like Intellibeams, anyway) projecting around the room, and onto three huge white orbs, two suspended above the dancefloor, and one above the stage. These cycled quickly through all kinds of filters and colours, at times making the orbs look as though they were big round 3D spheres, or bubbles, or eyes. There were also 4 stacks of 4 strobes placed just slightly above and around the band, which cycled and flashed most pleasantly. There were two video screens on either side of the stage, but neither was used at any time, except to project the lights onto. The stage setup consisted of Alex, on the left, behind some turntables and perhaps a sampler. Thrash was on the right, behind an an absolutely ENORMOUS mixer. Hidden behind them and masses of equipment appeared to be a bassist, a drummer, and perhaps a guitarist. The drummer didn't seem to add much to the show, in my opinion, but the bassist was amazing (could it have been Jah Wobble?). He really filled out the sound with some beautiful dub rumblings. The setlist, in my fuzzy recollection, went something like this: 1. O.O.B.E. 2. Blue Room 3. Little Fluffy Clouds 4. ??? - lots of dub bass 5. Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain ... 6. ??? 7. Towers of Dub 8. Star 6, 7, 8 & 9 I had a little trouble getting into it at first, partly because the lightshow wasn't as good as I had hoped, and partly because things were a little more ambient than I had expected. Little Fluffy Clouds (despite a HILARIOUS intro sample involving a woman with an intravenous morphine drip into her stomach) never seemed to come together; all of the pieces were there, but it never seemed to hit that magical groove for me. Still, great that they were experimenting so much with the mix. Then we came to Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain. Utterly WOW. They took a song that I had previously only heard as a 10+ minute ambient masterpiece (on Adventures.. and the Aubrey Mixes), cranked up the beat and turned it into something so fast it was almost HARDCORE! Together with those wonderful arpeggiated analog runs, the beat, the lights (i had moved into the center of the dancefloor by this point, which made a _big_ difference to the lightshow, for some reason), combined to put me in a gorgeous state of bliss. If anyone can tell me where to get this mix (the 12" perhaps?) I would be most grateful. Beauty for the heart, soul, mind, and dancin' feet. After this masterpiece, as far as I was concerned, these gods could do no wrong. Towers of Dub was long, but great, and benefitted greatly from the bass player's rumblings. The strobes were really effective during this as well. Star 6, 7, 8 & 9 (I think) featured a long sample (or perhaps Alex was spinning some vinyl) of an eastern woman singing, which was amazing and meshed perfectly with the mix. They didn't play either of my favourite tracks, U.F.Orb or Earth (Gaia), but I was still more than satisfied. This was the band I had given so much time and effort to see, and it was utterly, utterly worth it. On my way out past the coat check, i picked up a flier for the NASA tour in Montreal. I wouldn't be in Montreal to see it, but it was a great flier. Onward: Saturday in Montreal. _________________________________________________________________ Stephen White / University of Waterloo / sfwhite@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca -=- sfw -- Stephen F. White sfwhite@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca gopher://descartes.uwaterloo.ca/h0/mathSOC/.csc/.www/.sfwhite/homepage.html ... reality is eighty million polygons per second ...