The Orb - Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt

Twenty years on from its original release, one of the most focused and quietly blissful albums in The Orb's remarkable catalog returns to vinyl. When Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann released Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt in November 2005, it felt, as Kompakt themselves put it, fated, as though that is exactly the way it had to be. The pairing of Paterson's sample-led sonic imagination with Fehlmann's trademark hypnotic loops and delays produced something more disciplined and even-keeled than anything The Orb had made in years, a record that drew a deliberate line in the sand and announced a new chapter with total confidence.

The album's architecture is elegantly simple. The first half leans into minimal techno and schaffel shuffle with the hypnotic, dubby-fingered groove of opener "Komplikation" and the Schneider TM-featuring "Captain Korma," which brings a strangely Depeche Mode-influenced energy, and the rubbery bass of "Cool Harbour." The second half belongs entirely to the classic Orb ancestral domain, with "Traumvogel" leading the descent into cascading melodies, chiming textures, and the borderline found-sound unease of "Kompagna (Zandic Mix)," while Ulf Lohmann, Kompakt's own ambient guru, makes his own contribution to the record's quietly extraordinary second side.

The Orb have always been at their most powerful as a full-length experience, and Okie Dokie rewards that approach completely. As one devoted listener put it, it is audio comfort food, a well-worn world of blissful chillaxization where each track brings its own distinct and subtle mood shift without ever jarring you out of the reverie. Spread across two LPs and sounding better than ever, this is one of British electronic music's great cult albums, back where it belongs.