Badly Drawn Boy
Photo: Beggars Banquet

The original idea was for companies like Mitsubishi and the Gap to use artists like Groove Armada and Badly Drawn Boy to sell cars and clothes. But in the end, it may be that Groove Armada and Badly Drawn Boy were simply using cars and clothes to sell their music.

Exhibit A: As Seen on TV: Songs From Commercials, due June 5 from the people behind the chart-topping Now That's I What Call Music compilations. As Seen on TV includes some of the more memorable TV ad songs of recent months, from late singer/songwriter Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" — featured in a much-remarked-upon Volkswagen ad — to Badly Drawn Boy's equally delicate "The Shining," which the Gap used in a winter-themed ad.

The 20-song album also includes Trio's new-wave nugget "Da Da Da I Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Aha Aha Aha," used in a Volkswagen ad, the Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey's "History Repeating," used in a Jaguar ad, and Groove Armada's "I See You Baby," used in a Mitsubishi commercial.

Fittingly, As Seen on TV's makers plan to promote the TV-commercial comp with TV spots of its own.

Adam Starr, the UTV Records product manager who dreamed up As Seen on TV, said he hopes the compilation will give more exposure to acts like Drake and Badly Drawn Boy, whose sales hardly match their critical acclaim.

"When the Nick Drake commercial first happened, people were half disgusted by it and half, like, 'Great, he's getting attention.' And that's kind of the gist of what this is about," Starr said Tuesday (May 22).

Other tracks on the album, which UTV A&R Vice President Jeff Moskow described as "either cool or kitschy," include Handsome Boy Modeling School's "Rock n' Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This)," the Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds," the Buzzcocks' "What Do I Get?" and, of course, Styx's "Mr. Roboto." UTV isn't the first company to see potential profit in the boom of hip commercial soundtracks — Volkswagen itself recently released the collection Street Mix — Music From VW Commercials Volume 1, which includes the same Trio, Drake and Styx tracks (see "Volkswagen Rolls Out Mix CD With Styx, Trio, Other Commercial Hits").

• Badly Drawn Boy
• Nick Drake
• Groove Armada
• Fatboy Slim
• Propellerheads

The Orb's Alex Paterson
Photo: MCA

Sans floating pig, the Orb will return to America next month for their first Stateside performances in four years.

The Orb, fronted since their 1988 inception by the eccentric Alex Paterson, have staked a claim as one of electronic music's most accomplished live acts, a reputation birthed from legendary early-'90s shows that took the vibe of ambient "chill-out" rooms of raves and clubs and transformed it into an all-encompassing sensory experience. Some events even featured a giant porcine creature floating over the audience in an ode to Pink Floyd performances of yore.

Starting April 12 in the northern Miami suburb of Boynton Beach, Florida, the Orb will play 12 dates in support of their latest album, Cydonia, which was released February 27. Paterson said in a recent interview that he will be joined on the tour by longtime Orb family members Simon Philips, Witchman (born John Roome) and Fil LeGonidec, a former Killing Joke member who also records as Autolump with partner Pantoes Relax. "We can morph into four or five different bands between us," Paterson explained, referring to the myriad side projects he's worked on over the years. "We can be the Orb, Witchman can be Witchman, Witchman and me can be Multiverse, me and Simon can be Prayer Box, and Fil, our roadie, can also be Autolump." As always, the upcoming Orb shows promise to be out of the ordinary. "The intention is we can play a couple of sets before the Orb comes on," Paterson said, " and play newer material that no one's ever heard." He hinted that a few songs from the next Orb album, recorded in the last six months, will likely be sprinkled in among the sets. (Cydonia was completed two years before its release, but was delayed due to record-label mergers.) The shows will be a promotional double-whammy for Paterson, who will be releasing the first three singles on his innovative new Internet label, Bad Orb, on March 25, including an Autolump 12-inch. Each month the label (www.badorb.com) will present three new singles, which will be pressed according to how many orders are made for each, and then deleted. The other artists releasing tracks March 25 are Ayumi Hamasaki and S.E. Berlin, an alias of the German techno duo Sun Electric.

The Orb tour dates, according to their publicist:

• 4/12 - Boynton Beach, FL @ Orbit
• 4/13 - Tampa, FL @ Masquerade
• 4/14 - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
• 4/17 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
• 4/18 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
• 4/19 - Boston, MA @ Avalon Ballroom
• 4/21 - Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew's Hall
• 4/22 - Toronto, ON @ Guvernment
• 4/23 - Chicago, IL @ Metro
• 4/24 - Lawrence, KS @ Granada
• 4/25 - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
• 4/27 - San Francisco, CA @ Maritime Hall

• The Orb

The Orb's Alex Paterson
Photo: MCA

Feel free to sit back, relax and space out again: The Orb have returned.

The land of chill-out music has lain fallow since 1997, the year the most recent Orb album, Orblivion, was released. And that, arguably, wasn't even an "ambient" album, at least in the conventional Orb sense. Now, after record-label entanglement delayed its release, Cydonia — the latest concoction to spring from the multi-dimensional mind of one Dr. Alex Paterson — is being offered for public consumption, starting Tuesday (February 27).

Its flavors are many.

"It's a bit more songy, a bit more poppy," Paterson said from his West London flat, where he lives with his girlfriend and their newborn daughter. "I didn't want to make it sound too corny, though." Exhibit A for the new Orb songcraft is "Once More," Cydonia's first single, on which Dr. Alex manages to squeeze into the four-minute format enough dreamy mood and pensive texture for several tracks.

Japanese singer Aki, who appears on three songs, provides an added element of otherworldliness with her breathy, floating vocals. Paterson then slows the tempo down to the familiar ambient-dub pace he loves best on "Promis," a cut that seems to mine the soil of the album's title, which refers to a purported ancient city on Mars that looks like a face when viewed from a distance.

"There's a really good book called 'Planetary Mysteries,' written by Richard Grossinger," Paterson said, sifting through the shelves of his library when queried about Cydonia. "I picked this up around the time of 'Blue Room' " — from the Orb's 1992 album, U.F.Orb — "and all my sort of UFOlogy sh--. It talks about the actual logistics of how an object like a face can be created by natural erosion, which is totally impossible." Two more tranced-out dubby tunes, "Ghostdancing" and "Turn It Down," follow "Promis," before "A Mile Long Lump of Lard" launches into a churning swirl of stomping madness. "Centuries," with Aki's goddess voice atop again, heads back down to the roots, exploring the ambient-house territory that Paterson himself defined nearly a decade ago and which has since spawned a genre unto itself.

Paterson referred to "Lard" as "industrial techno, but with a mad back groove to it." He said Cydonia, his first release without engineer Andy Hughes since U.F.Orb, represented several new directions for the Orb. "Rather than make it some kind of 4/4 out-there techno music, which is pretty much what we've done in a lot of respects, it's very much in the same sort of experimental side as Orbus Terrarum," he said, referring to his 1995 LP.

Although Cydonia sags a bit toward its close, it's buoyed by the drum'n'bass tune "Thursday's Keeper," which is fueled by a variety of reggae samples, as well as the multi-tiered, epic closer, "Terminus," which slowly bubbles up from the gurgling ocean floor to emerge as waves of classic Orb ambient grooves.

For his part, Paterson is pleased with the album, but more than anything he's just happy to still be relevant.

"I'm really, really lucky that people are actually interested in what I'm doing," he reflected. "Ten years ago I never even thought it would go this far."

• The Orb

The Orb's first new music since 1997 will finally see the light of day on February 27 when Cydonia,, the electronic-music execs' long-delayed fifth studio album, is released in the U.S.

"I suppose it's a relief, or a release," bemoaned the group's fearless leader, Dr. Alex Paterson, from his London home (and through myriad yawns). "I am very happy that it's gonna come out. I just wish it could have taken a little bit less time." Paterson said the album, which was completed in late 1998, was caught up in record-label limbo stemming from 1999's Universal/Polygram merger. The outfit's most recent output, including 1998's best-of compilation U.F. Off, was issued by Island; in the U.S., Cydonia will be released by MCA Records.

The LP will be preceded by "Once More," a single which has already been bootlegged and remixed by a number of artists, including John Digweed (as Bedrock), who included it on Sasha & Digweed's hit double-CD mix Communicate last year. The track features ethereal vocals by Japanese singer Aki, who also sings on an album track called "Centuries." Cydonia, the Orb's first studio album since 1997's Orblivion, is titled after a region of Mars that has been purported to be the site of an ancient Martian city. (The recent action film "Mission to Mars" was set in Cydonia.) "Rather than make it some kind of 4/4, out-there techno music, which is pretty much what we've done in a lot of respects, it's very much in the same experimental side as [1995's] Orbus Terrarum," Paterson said of the new LP. "But it's got sort-of songs, rather than not. Instead of 15-minute epics, it's like four-minute tracks." Some typically expansive Orb tracks did make the final cut, however, including the nine-minute "Mile Long Lump of Lard," which Paterson described as "industrial techno with a mad back groove." Cydonia also marks the first Orb record since the departure of engineer and live collaborator Andy Hughes, who first appeared on Live '93 and contributed to six tracks on the new record. Paterson did not seem terribly fazed by Hughes' absence.

"His engineering is pretty funky, but I think we can get on," he said.

"Once you miss one engineer, another one comes along very quickly. It's a bit like a bus. Or they all come along at the same time, and you never see one for ages." In addition to the new album, Paterson is launching a record label, Bad Orb. Beginning in March, the Web site www.badorb.com will post an audio sample of a new track, selected by Paterson, which will be available for purchase as as a 12-inch for exactly one month before it is deleted from the site. The first song offered by Bad Orb will be by the Berlin electronic duo Sun Electric, followed by collaborations between Paterson and longtime mates Guy Pratt and former Killing Joke member Fil, who worked on "Mile Long Lump of Lard" as well as "Spanish Castles in Space" off the group's 1991 debut, The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. On Thursday, Paterson will host the first installment of Internet radio show "Thursday Teatime" on the Groovetech Web site (www.groovetech.com), which recently opened a London studio. The Doctor will present a combination DJ set/live performance (with assistance from Orb engineer and bassist Simon Philips) on the three-hour program, which airs every other week at 4 p.m. (GMT).

Paterson said Cydonia would have been released last October — before the Orb had secured a U.S. label — if not for the September birth of his first daughter, Mia Arizona, so named after the skies of the American Southwest. Apparently Mia is already a big music fan. "She just loves reggae," Paterson said. "She loves the basslines." How shocking.

• The Orb

April 8 [14:00 EST] -- Ambient dance outfit The Orb is coming to American shores for a one-month tour that kicks off on April 18 in Tampa, Florida.

The act, which centers around Alex Paterson, will give fans an earful of its seventh album, "Orblivion," on the tour, which will feature co-headliners The Chemical Brothers on select dates.

If you want to catch the act, here's the itinerary:

• 4/18 - Tampa, FL @ Ritz Theatre
• 4/19 - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
• 4/21 - New Orleans, LA @ House Of Blues
• 4/23 - Austin, TX @ Austin Music Hall
• 4/24 - Dallas, TX @ Bomb Factory
• 4/27 - Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
• 4/29 - Seattle, WA @ DV8
• 5/1 - Los Angeles, CA @ Karma
• 5/2 - Las Vegas, NV @ Joint
• 5/4 - San Francisco, CA @ Concourse Exhib. Ctr.
• 5/6 - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
• 5/9 - New York, NY @ Manhattan Center Ballroom
• 5/10 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
• 5/12 - Boston, MA @ Avalon
• 5/13 - Toronto, ONT @ R.P.M.

• The Orb