The Orb Announces 2016 North American Tour Dates

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The Orb (Alex Paterson & Thomas Fehlmann, above) has announced a 2016 North American tour, supporting their new album, COW / Chill Out, World!, which will be released October 14, 2016.

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of The Orb’s debut album Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, so audiences can expect a selection of songs from it, cuts from the forthcoming Chill Out World and more.

Paterson describes COW as “our most ambient album yet”. Much of the material is based on field recordings captured during the duo’s touring of the world and processed on laptops in downtime.

“Making the album became so natural for us that a track like 9 Elms Over River Eno (Channel 9) consisted only of material collected at North Carolina’s Moogfest in May – second-hand records from local stores, found sounds, live samples from gigs that we liked, and of course an excursion to the Eno river, which actually exists”, notes Paterson. “I discovered it on Google maps, whilst looking for somewhere to chill out. The name stood out, for obvious reasons! This geographic intimacy and spontaneity are among the top reasons why we love this album.”

Fehlmann adds, “we didn’t intend to rehash old chill out vibes. On the contrary. It’s the 21st century and it seems like a good idea for people to sit back and chill the fuck out, before continuing to act destructively. To chill out is to act consciously, guided from a calm centre.”

Here’s a track from COW, 5th Dimensions:

The fall tour will include visits to both East Coast and West Coast venues, including New York City’s Webster Hall, Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse, and Seattle’s Neumos. More dates below and others to be announced soon. See their site for details.

Tour Dates:

  • 10/19 ALLSTON, MA BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL
  • 10/20 NEW YORK, NY WEBSTER HALL
  • 10/21 CARRBORO, NC CAT’S CRADLE
  • 10/22 ATLANTA, GA VARIETY PLAYHOUSE
  • 10/23 ASHEVILLE, NC MOUNTAIN THEATRE
  • 10/26 SEATTLE, WA NEUMOS
  • 10/27 PORTLAND, OR STAR THEATER
  • 10/28 DENVER, CO CERVANTES’ OTHER SIDE

13 thoughts on “The Orb Announces 2016 North American Tour Dates

      1. True story: If you do a search through the Synthtopia image archive for ‘orb’, Orbital images show up in the results.

        Image updated & thanks for the feedback, everyone!

    1. You are all correct!

      We had a correct image of The Orb on this post, but when we searched our image database for ‘orb’ to get a preview image (which shows on the homepage and as the preview on Facebook), the search matched on an Orbital image. We didn’t catch the mismatch and so the homepage and Facebook showed a silhouette of The Orbital for a short time.

      Thanks to reader feedback, we found out about our error pretty quickly and corrected the error.

      Thanks everybody for the feedback. Now back to the real news – The Orb is touring North America this fall!

  1. Synthtopia, can you please stop allowing auto-playing video ads? At least on the posts that allow us to stream music. It’s very annoying and disrespectful to the music you’re highlighting.

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