The Orb, Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume 3)

It's been 20 years (!!) since Dr. Alex Patterson started playing Mike Oldfield tracks to acid-fried ravers at Land of Oz's White Room and gave birth to ambient house. The tone deaf will tell you that, with The Orb, Patterson has been making the same record over and over. However, as Baghdad Batteries, the Orb's ninth album, demonstrates, the group's ever growing pulsating sound has mutated in new directions. Since 2004, the Orb has been a duo comprised of Patterson and Thomas Fehlmann, the veteran German electronica producer who has pushed the Orb ever so slightly toward minimal techno, and his predilection for glitchy click beats is evident here on tracks like "Styrofoam Meltdown," "Suburban Smog" (The Orb goes disco!) and the gauzy rocksteady of "Super Soakers." Elsewhere, "Oopa" has the immersive snap, crackle, pop of Stefan Betke's Pole records; a cat purrs to the sound of a harp; and on "Chocolate Fingers" it sounds as if Patterson and Fehlmann have dragged the Steve Miller Band and Dinosaur L's "Go Bang" through molasses. Sure, there are the expected mbira samples and some lame ersatz dub, but Baghdad Batteries is as texturally rich as the best Kompakt record and as darkly luminous as the best ambient house.