''Bicycles & Tricycles'' is the sixth
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
by English
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
group
the Orb
The Orb are an English electronic music group founded in 1988 by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty. Known for their psychedelic sound, the Orb developed a cult following among clubbers "coming down" from drug-induced highs. Their influential 19 ...
, released on 3 May 2004 by
Cooking Vinyl
Cooking Vinyl is a British independent record label, based in Acton, London, England, founded in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and business partner Pete Lawrence. Goldschmidt remains the current owner and chairman ...
.
It brought together the group's style of the early 1990s with current electronic music,
with its most prevalent influences being
drum and bass
Drum and bass (also written as drum & bass or drum'n'bass and commonly abbreviated as D&B, DnB, or D'n'B) is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by fast breakbeats (typically 165–185 beats per minute) with heavy bass and sub-ba ...
and
trip hop
Trip hop (sometimes used synonymously with "downtempo") is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as a psychedelic music, psychedelic fusion of hip hop music, hip hop ...
.
''Bicycles & Tricycles'' received mixed reactions from critics. ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was fo ...
'' praises it as being "inclusive, exploratory, and an enjoyable journey",
but many other publications dismissed it as "stoner dub" and deemed it largely irrelevant to contemporary electronic music culture.
''NME'' scored the album a lowly 3/10, calling it "more of the same from an act who have been ploughing the same furrow for so long they'll be reaching the Earth's core soon".
To promote the album, the Orb began a UK tour with
Mad Professor
Mad Professor (born Neil Joseph Stephen Fraser, 1955, Georgetown, Guyana) is a Guyanese-born British dub music producer and engineer known for his original productions and remix work. He is considered one of the leading producers of dub music ...
, who had remixed their work in the past. Though the Orb still pulled in large crowds, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' described one
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
performance as "joyless" and stated that few of the new tracks "really go anywhere".
Track listing
;UK version
# "Orb Is (Shopping Version)" – 4:49
# Aftermath" – 4:40
# "The Land of Green Ginger (rmx)" – 4:01
# "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
# "Gee Strings" – 6:41
# "Prime Evil" – 5:14
# "Abstractions (Trance Pennine Express)" – 6:49
# "L.U.C.A." – 5:23
# "From a Distance (Blast Master v The Corpral)" – 3:55
# "Tower Twenty Three (Spud v Kreature Mix)" – 6:33
# "Kompania (Grooved Ware Mix)" – 6:19
# "Dilmun" – 4:02
;US version
# "Orb Is (Shopping Version)" – 4:49
# "Aftermath" – 4:40
# "The Land of Green Ginger" – 4:01
# "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
# "Gee Strings" – 6:41
# "Prime Evil" – 5:14
# "Abstractions (Trance Pennine Express)" – 6:49
# "From a Distance (Blast Master v The Corpral)" – 3:55
# "Tower Twenty Three (Spud v Kreature Mix)" – 6:33
# "Kompania (Grooved Ware Mix)" – 6:19
# "Dilmun" – 4:02
;Japanese version
# "From a Distance (12" Z Mix)" – 5:32
# "The Land of Green Ginger (rmx)" – 4:01
# "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
# "Gee Strings" – 6:41
# "Prime Evil" – 5:14
# "Orb Is" – 3:28
# "Now Here" – 5:20
# "Abstractions (Submarium Mix)" – 6:56
# "L.U.C.A." – 5:23
# "Compania" – 1:54
# "Tower Twenty Three" – 7:50
# "Dilmun" – 4:02
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bicycles and Tricycles
The Orb albums
2004 albums