The Orb — Little fluffy clouds. Story behind the track

Before telling the story of the recording of Little fluffy clouds, a little preface about how everyone got together. Paterson, Cauty and Glover had been hanging out together since the early eighties. Paterson worked as a tour manager for the band of the other two. House music from overseas forced them to leave their guitars for a while. Cauty bought a synthesiser, but couldn’t figure out how it worked. Paterson had been chasing this synthesiser for the last five years and, seeing a puzzled Cauty, offered to record music. Thus, in the summer of 1988, The Orb was created.

The three of them organised the first white room in the raving UK, located in a corner of the huge Heaven club, where the well-known Paul Oakenfold played acid house. At first, the trio was watched by only a few, but, after a couple of months, the white room was filled. No one danced; everyone was just lying there. Paterson and Cauty played music for those who could no longer dance. They had three turntables, a cassette player, a compact disc player and tons of material that they mixed into one canvas: Brian Eno’s ambient with Strauss waltzes, Hotel California with film soundtracks, and birdsong with samples from science fiction series. And at some point, they thought, Why don’t we do the same in the studio?

The 18-minute single Loving you, which allows you to imagine the whole atmosphere of sessions and relaxation in the white room, quickly raised the band to the status of “the ambient house for the ecstasy generation,” but the band itself almost ceased to exist in the process. Jimmy wanted them to be published on his small label. Paterson argued that they would achieve more with a major label. Cauty took the band’s already recorded first album (and published it under the name Space).

Paterson was left with only the name: The Orb. Glover came to the rescue: “We will do better.” It was a challenge: Jimmy tore it up with scandalous performances: his band KLF was named the most successful that year, he released Chill out recorded in one take and was shooting the conceptual road movie White Room. How do you compete with him? Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait too long. Glover’s friend and a big fan of the band sent them a cassette where one side had an interview with Ricky Lee Jones who had a cold, and the other had Electronic Counterpoint by Steve Reich. A note was attached to the cassette: “You guys are going to have to make a track out of this. It is definitely The Orb material.”

“I can’t tell you how many times we’ve turned up in America and heard, So, where’s the vocalist, man?” Paterson says. “They expect to see some bird, and it’s like Well, you’ll be hearing her later. Don’t worry...” According to Martin Glover, he brought over a demo with Jones’ sampled response, a bass part and some sort of drums. Paterson: “I took a whistling harmonica from an Ennio Morricone soundtrack, then Pat Metheny performing Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint III and some drums from Harry Nilsson’s Jump into the fire, but slowed them right down. I kept that secret for years. And not many people know that Lee Scratch Perry’s on there, either. I’m not saying which of his tracks we used, so good luck finding it.”

The music business of the early nineties had only just started dealing with the phenomenon of mass borrowing without asking or paying royalties. It was possible to put any track into samplers that were getting cheaper and cheaper, include it into your own track and sell it without question to a label that wasn’t even interested in the origins of the sounds. When Rickie Lee Jones, an American folk singer whose memories of the colour of clouds from her childhood were perceived as a psychedelic monologue in the ecstasy-crazed UK, found out that The Orb had taken her voice without a license, her lawyers demanded 100% of all revenues from the track. Fortunately, they agreed on five thousand dollars and put this matter to rest. Steve Reich heard Little fluffy clouds about twelve years later and delicately requested 20% of the single’s revenues, without demanding anything that had accrued before. He had no idea that it was possible to create another song from his and asked The Orbs to make a remix.

Alex Paterson

“I’ve always thought that plagiarism is creative,” he agrees. “In no way did I consider it to be destructive, especially if you can twist that sample and make it become something else. That’s why Steve Reich viewed Little fluffy clouds like a real musician, telling people that he could never have envisaged his melody being turned into another song. In fact, we never went to him and said, We sampled you. It was just that oldschool punk rock attitude of If you want something, you can come and get us. And Rickie Lee Jones also ended up liking the song because she could consider herself cool again. Never mind that her management wasn’t too keen; she overrode her management. So the sharks swimming around the musicians are the ones you’ve always got to look out for. It’s rarely the musicians.”

“That song is now my calling card. I thought it was too poppy, but people loved it. It’s a song that follows me around. There’s a beer named after it, and I just found an Italian bread called Little fluffy clouds at Brixton market.

Paul Hartnoll from Orbital came to see us play with Kakatsitsi right before the Glastonbury show. I was going on to him, Would you fancy doing a little remix of Little fluffy clouds? And he just looked at me and went, Man, would I? I would love to get my name on that, and I was thinking that was a little over the top. You just don’t know how many people come up to Orbital and ask, Are you going to play Little fluffly clouds? Orb, Orbital. We get the same thing. People keep thinking we’re Orbital. Not everyone, but it does happen.”