Tuesday 13 October 2009

S.o.t.D. – Little Fluffy Clouds - The Orb


Absolutely classic tune, one of my all time favourites. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this track had a huge impact on my life. I heard it in a club in Detroit and it blew my mind, but didn’t know what it was. Asked in some record stores, nobody knew what I was talking about. A few months later I was at my friend Zoë’s house on a friday night where a few of us were sittting around talking, a video show on in the background. A video for this song came on. I was elated. Now I knew what it was. Rushed out the next morning and hit every record store until I found the CD, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. It was as mind blowing as the single. Ambienty/dubby/techno-y - just a mind boggling array of styles. It, along with Pacific by 808 State were what totally turned me on to the emerging techno scene. Then I heard Orbital, and Black Dog and several others and it just grew and grew from there.

The sample comes from a conversation between Rickie Lee Jones and Levar Burton on the children’s television program Reading Rainbow.
Burton: “What were the skies like when you were young?”
Jones: “They went on forever – They - When I w- We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in ’em, and, uh... they were long... and clear and... there were lots of stars at night. And, uh, when it would rain, it would all turn - it- They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies as a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow and on fire, and the clouds would catch the colors everywhere. That’s uh, neat cause I used to look at them all the time, when I was little. You don’t see that. You might still see them in the desert.”

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