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Released: April 1991

Rating: 4.357 (average of 7 ratings)

Genre: electronica

Quotable: --

Album Tracks, Disc 1 (UK edition):

  1. Little Fluffy Clouds [4:27]
  2. Earth (Gaia) [9:48]
  3. Supernova at the End of the Universe [11:56]
  4. Back Side of the Moon [14:15] *
  5. Spanish Castles in Space [15:05] *

Album Tracks, Disc 2 (UK edition):

  1. Perpetual Dawn [9:31]
  2. Into the Fourth Dimension [9:16]
  3. Outlands [8:23]
  4. Star 6 & 7 8 9 [8:10]
  5. A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld [18:49] *
* Not on U.S. single-disc edition. See “Notes.”

Sales:

sales in U.S. only --
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated --

Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart --
peak on U.K. album chart 29

Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Perpetual Dawn (6/15/91) #18 UK
  • Little Fluffy Clouds (11/13/91) #10 UK

Notes: “There are three versions, a 109:41 minute UK release [track listing above], a 70:41 minute U.S. release and a 182:05 minute UK Deluxe Edition reissue that was released in mid 2006” (Wikipedia). The latter was a 3-disc set that included alternate versions of seven of the original album’s songs.

Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more.

Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
The Orb
Review:
“Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld is a seminal 1991 ambient house concept album” (Wikipedia). “The double album is a continuous progressive composition” (Wikipedia), a “two-hour psychedelic trip though music genres and studio electronics, pushing the threshold of live stage performance” (Wikipedia). There are “several tracks advancing the travel concept and composed of vocal samples and sound effects interspersed with original music” (Wikipedia).

“The first Orb album was entirely new when it appeared: a low-key dance record, with echoes and swells more than up-front tunes, stoner-level dub bass, and all sorts of samples and sounds – seagulls, film clips, astronaut voices, bits of disco – fluttering through the mix like hallucinations. Essentially a techno album for tired dancers, it’s held up nicely over time, thanks to its intricate, dreamy sonics. Beyond the classic Little Fluffy Clouds – a set of interlocking synth hooks and loping percussion, held together by a cut-up sample of Rickie Lee Jones talking about the skies of her youth--there are lots of mellow delights here, particularly the blissful reggae groove Perpetual Dawn” (Wolk).

Review Source(s):

Last updated January 28, 2009.