THE ORB – PATTERNS, BRIGHTON 24.10.25
Decades on from their kickstart at Heaven nightclub in the late 1980’s, The Orb continue to prove themselves as pioneers in electronic music with quiet audacity and playful intelligence. The group, founded by Alex Paterson, turns dance floors around, replacing common ideas of rave euphoria into a hallucinatory adventure across ambient fields of fuzzy spoken word, dub and liquid house. Their 1991 debut ‘Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld’ redefined what ambient could mean, stepping beyond the basic understanding of background music by creating a vivid, cinematic experience that blended dub baselines with cosmic samples. Ultimately, pioneering the UK’s nascent ‘ambient house’. More than thirty years on, The Orb have remained innovators, pushing boundaries by refusing to commit to an absolute seriousness. Their collaborations with figures such as David Gilmour, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and, on their most recent 2025 album, Roger Eno and Youth, have consistently aided the expansion of their sound.
Fresh off the release of their latest album ‘Buddhist Hipsters’, The Orb spend an hour and a half transforming Patterns into a communal rave space, emulating feelings of nostalgia for the, now matured, E generation in the audience. Much like the latest album, their performance draws on the aforementioned well-established style, whilst brief elements of UKG and techno in their performance helps cultivate a sense of modernity and unpredictability. Straying from the mainstream might feel limiting for most musicians, but seems to energise Paterson, his creativity seemingly thriving on experimentation and play. Whilst trends in electronic music continue to come and go, The Orb continue to play in their own axis, pursuing and reinventing the vision that first emerged from late 80’s London club culture.
Both Alex Paterson and colleague Paul Conboy quietly take to the stage with absolute humility, slipping into position behind their equipment with minimal fanfare. There is no grand entrance or demand for attention, just two figures bowing their heads toward laptops and mixing decks, instantly beginning their process of creation. The lighting design enhances this sense of mystery: soft, shifting hues of neon colours obscure their faces, turning them into silhouettes only to reveal a person when the light occasionally panned in their direction. This act of deflection redirects the focus onto the music and the hypnotic visuals that swirl across the wall stage left, the psychedelic projections elevate the atmosphere, morphing and syncing with the sound. It is these visuals that earned the group comparisons to Pink Floyd in the 90’s. This comparison then invited descriptions of the group as hippie revivalists, although strongly refuted by Paterson, looking at the long-time fans in the audience and their attire, it doesn’t take a genius to understand where these comparisons came from.
As the set begins, The Orb ease the audience in with soft cosmic vocals, familiar ethereal murmurs that seem to drift in from out of space, incidentally landing on a dance floor far from where they came. Following this, an intermittent baseline takes shape, pulsating into a full-bodied dance floor-ready groove. The audience is ready to let go, the night is now in motion; immersive, communal and definitively The Orb.
On the floor, the atmosphere mirrors the freedom of the late 80’s and early 90’s rave era that welcomed the group. There’s a refreshing absence of self consciousness amongst these ravers, the crowd moves with abandon, allowing their inhibitions to be carried away in sound and movement, there is no place for judgement here. This being a stark contrast from younger electronic music crowds I find myself in, who can’t seem to shake the social-media-induced-self-awareness and perform what I call the ‘post-covid shuffle’: an awkward formulaic side to side step balanced with the occasional gun finger in the air.
It would be unfair to credit The Orb’s longevity solely as a product of nostalgia. While it’s unlikely this is the first time many in the audience have seen them, my Mum, for one, proudly leant over to me in the crowd to whisper about catching them open for Primal Scream at the Empire Ballroom in Leicester Square back on 29th July 1991 – the appeal extends beyond memory. Among the veterans of the early rave scene there are plenty of younger faces, their numbers growing as the night goes on, as curious passers by filter in from the street, lucky to stumble upon this halcyon trance. Their flexibility in appealing to a modern audience can be seen directly in their choice of equipment, Alex Paterson mainly sticking to a Pioneer DJ controller, while Paul Conboy seemed to choose a laptop and an analogue dj mixer. Both clearly keeping up with tech advances in DJing, and choosing quality and innovation and combining this with tradition.
As the set progresses, the BPM rises, with some heavy baselines (the type not uncommon in UKG) shell over the top of the ambient house, and erratic, Prodigy-style breakdowns briefly hijack the mix. In these moments, the crowd seems unsure of this intensity, but as the duo return to The Orb’s signature terrain, ambient passages underpinned by deep, echoing dub, the room falls back into the moment – it was clear what they had come for.
The mixing itself was characterised by blasting reverb transitions that stretched each track into the next. Layers of sounds: soft hypnotic xylophones, melodic harmonicas, pulsing low frequencies, and frog croaking combined together to create something cosmic. The Orb have always thrived on genre-bending and tonight was no exception. There were a few moments of imperfection, an abrupt transition here, a beat introduced too early there, but these slip ups were fleeting, quickly swallowed by the cacophony of sounds.
As the set came to an end, they began to engage with the audience more, taking a bow to signify the ending before dropping their popular classics ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ and ‘A Huge Overgrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld’. ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ received a blend with The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’, appearing incongruous but adding to the performance as the crowd sang along gleefully, elevating euphoria in the final moments of the gig. The later track saw them purposefully cutting the sound, forcing the audience to stand in for Minnie Riperton’s vocals on the track ‘Lovin’You’ before launching into the transcendent celestial beat that followed. Encouraging the audience to sing in unison drew on the community aspect of the gig that was prevalent throughout. As the sound was brought down and finally cut, the gig received an enthusiastic and heart-felt round of applause from a clearly satisfied and now-full audience in Patterns. I’m sure if they haven’t already, many will be grabbing tickets to see them again at The Factory Live in Worthing, March 2026 – Grab your tickets HERE.
