Bicycles & Tricycles

Bicycles & Tricycles
Studio album by
The Orb
Released3 May 2004
Genre
Length63:55
LabelCooking Vinyl
Producer
The Orb chronology
Cydonia
(2001) 		Bicycles & Tricycles
(2004) 		Okie Dokie It's The Orb on Kompakt
(2005)
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic61/100[1]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[2]
The Guardian[3]
Mojo[4]
NME3/10[5]
Pitchfork6.5/10[6]
Release Magazine7/10[7]
Resident Advisor[8]
Rolling Stone[9]
Slant Magazine[10]
URB[11]

Bicycles & Tricycles is the sixth studio album by English electronic music group the Orb, released on 3 May 2004 by Cooking Vinyl.[12] It brought together the group's style of the early 1990s with current electronic music,[13] with its most prevalent influences being drum and bass and trip hop.[14]

Bicycles & Tricycles received mixed reactions from critics. The Daily Telegraph praises it as being "inclusive, exploratory, and an enjoyable journey",[15] but many other publications dismissed it as "stoner dub" and deemed it largely irrelevant to contemporary electronic music culture.[16][17] 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".[5]

To promote the album, the Orb began a UK tour with Mad Professor, who had remixed their work in the past. Though the Orb still pulled in large crowds, The Guardian described one London performance as "joyless" and stated that few of the new tracks "really go anywhere".[18]

Track listing

UK version
  1. "Orb Is (Shopping Version)" – 4:49
  2. Aftermath" – 4:40
  3. "The Land of Green Ginger (rmx)" – 4:01
  4. "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
  5. "Gee Strings" – 6:41
  6. "Prime Evil" – 5:14
  7. "Abstractions (Trance Pennine Express)" – 6:49
  8. "L.U.C.A." – 5:23
  9. "From a Distance (Blast Master v The Corpral)" – 3:55
  10. "Tower Twenty Three (Spud v Kreature Mix)" – 6:33
  11. "Kompania (Grooved Ware Mix)" – 6:19
  12. "Dilmun" – 4:02
US version
  1. "Orb Is (Shopping Version)" – 4:49
  2. "Aftermath" – 4:40
  3. "The Land of Green Ginger" – 4:01
  4. "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
  5. "Gee Strings" – 6:41
  6. "Prime Evil" – 5:14
  7. "Abstractions (Trance Pennine Express)" – 6:49
  8. "From a Distance (Blast Master v The Corpral)" – 3:55
  9. "Tower Twenty Three (Spud v Kreature Mix)" – 6:33
  10. "Kompania (Grooved Ware Mix)" – 6:19
  11. "Dilmun" – 4:02
Japanese version
  1. "From a Distance (12" Z Mix)" – 5:32
  2. "The Land of Green Ginger (rmx)" – 4:01
  3. "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
  4. "Gee Strings" – 6:41
  5. "Prime Evil" – 5:14
  6. "Orb Is" – 3:28
  7. "Now Here" – 5:20
  8. "Abstractions (Submarium Mix)" – 6:56
  9. "L.U.C.A." – 5:23
  10. "Compania" – 1:54
  11. "Tower Twenty Three" – 7:50
  12. "Dilmun" – 4:02

References

  1. ^ "Bicycles & Tricycles by The Orb" – via www.metacritic.com.
  2. ^ Allmusic review
  3. ^ "CD: The Orb, Bicycles & Tricycles". The Guardian. 30 April 2004.
  4. ^ While they're hardly cutting-edge these days, The Orb's gently pleasing grooves... still work as aural enhancers for the cannabinoidally-incliined. [Jun 2004, p.114]
  5. ^ a b "Bicycles & Tricycles". NME (review). 5 June 2004. p. 57.
  6. ^ "Pitchfork Media review". Archived from the original on 25 March 2008. Retrieved 2 March 2008.
  7. ^ "The Orb: Bicycles & Tricycles - Release Music Magazine review". www.releasemagazine.net.
  8. ^ "Resident Advisor review". Archived from the original on 26 December 2004. Retrieved 26 May 2006.
  9. ^ "Rolling Stone review". Archived from the original on 2 October 2007.
  10. ^ Slant Magazine review
  11. ^ 11 tracks of classic ambient house and melodic decks and EFX exercises. [Sep 2004, p.116]
  12. ^ "Bicycles & Tricycles - The Orb | Release Info". AllMusic.
  13. ^ Theakston, Rob. "Bicycles & Tricycles Review". Allmusic. Retrieved 10 October 2006.
  14. ^ Cowen, Andrew (21 October 1998). "Ambient gurus refuse to lie down". Birmingham Post. p. 15.
  15. ^ Perry, Andrew (1 May 2004). "Staying in CDs". The Daily Telegraph. p. 12.
  16. ^ Verrico, Lisa (14 May 2004). "The Orb". The Times. p. 19.
  17. ^ Miller, Phil (8 May 2004). "CDs". The Herald. p. 2.
  18. ^ O'Grady, Carrie (18 May 2004). "The Orb Concert Review: Coronet, London". The Guardian.