Dr. Alex Paterson (The Orb) Bio

With Dr. Alex Paterson always setting the controls, The Orb are long acknowledged as prime instigators in 1988’s acid house revolution, taking a genre called “ambient house” to the top of the album charts, always pushing the outer limits of electronic innovation and sonic pioneering.
Starship commander Alex is now celebrating 35 years of visionary mischief-making with his ever-changing band, along with renewed global success and respect with a new electronic generation, while still wielding prime dub rhythms, audacious samples, space-traveling musical flotation tanks and decidedly British humor.

Born in Battersea, Alex started as a roadie for Killing Joke in 1979 before taking an A&R job at EG Records in 1982. Like many, life changed for Alex with the onset of acid house around 1987 when he injected chillout calm DJing at Paul Oakenfold’s Land Of Oz club with Jimmy Cauty, playing Kraftwerk, Eno, ambient sounds and dub. After starting the WAU! label with Youth, he launched The Orb, working with Jimmy Cauty on 1988’s The Kiss EP (in homage to the influential New York radio stations that so informed his musical attitude) then hijacked Minnie Riperton’s ‘Loving You’ for what becomes ’89’s monstrous breakthrough ‘A Huge Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld’.

After Cauty departed to concentrate on KLF, Alex and Youth collaborated on the Rickie Lee Jones-heisting ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, followed by The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld with a gaggle of guests, including German electronic luminary (and lifelong foil) Thomas Fehlmann, guitarist Steve Hillage, bassist Guy Pratt and Youth. Soon recognized as a giant step in electronic music, the album is promoted by Alex turning The Orb into a live experience at the same time as working on follow-up U.F. Orb. By now, they’re much sought for remixes, especially after taking Primal Scream’s ‘Higher Than The Sun’ to the heavens on 1991’s Screamadelica.

Boasting Jah Wobble’s seismic bass on epic single ‘Blue Room’, and further honing of The Orb’s trademark, sample-built dub-fried foragings, the album is launched at the Planetarium and rocks the planet by entering the UK album charts at number one in July 1992. After 1993’s Live 93 cements The Orb as a world-class attraction, the following year’s mini album Pomme Fritz – their first after signing to Island Records – takes a mischievously experimental detour that divides critics; maybe a reflection of the bad management and studio conflict that even threatened to derail The Orb. With Thomas Fehlmann and engineer Andy Hughes on board, Alex creates 1995’s Orbus Terrarum, mining deeper into personalizing The Orb away from what anyone expected.

The Orb then uncork 1997’s Orbus Terrarum and find themselves playing chess on Top Of The Pops when ‘Toxygene’ hits number four in the charts. Upheavals at Island delayed fifth album Cydonia until 2001, showing Alex delving into song structures and using singers. It was followed by 2004’s Bicycles & Tricycles, then the following year’s Okie Dokie It’s The Orb On Kompakt, which brought Fehlmann to the fore and reflected current electronic ripples. Youth returned for 2007’s The Dream, which harked back to the early ’90s with Hillage on board and presaged an extensive reissue campaign. By 2009’s Baghdad Batteries, The Orb were on Malicious Damage, the label on which Killing Joke had first recorded in the late ’70s.

The Orb were back in the spotlight in 2010 when Youth and Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour joined Alex for Metallic Spheres, which reached number 12 in the album charts. Two years later, Alex was joined by reggae legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry for The Observer In The Star House, followed by More Tales From The Observatory in 2013.

After several years plumbing the underground, Alex and Thomas returned to Kompakt and made 2015’s Moonbuilding 2073, called the best Orb album in over 20 years by critics. The Orb’s renaissance continued with COW/Chill Out, World!. making ambient sounds for the modern world, before throwing another curve using singers on songs on 2018’s No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, albeit with an Orb twist. Now working with co-pilot Michael Rendall, 2020’s widescreen The Abolition of the Royal Familia was the stratospheric icing on the ever-growing space-cake.

Throughout it all, Alex has remained faithful to his first love of DJing, playing epic sets on WNBC.London from the West Norwood Book and Record Bar, including mesmerizing 24 hour epics during the first lockdown, spreading his wings as restrictions ease.

Now enjoying a UK surge in popularity with the latest generation, The Orb have also been recognized as prime sonic innovators in the US. Once again space is the place and the sky’s just the start of the journeys in store.