Little Fluffy Clouds, by The Orb

1991. I was twenty. I used to spend days in bed listening to music. Books of poetry, novels, NME's, Melody Maker's newspapers were on/under my bed/sheets (my personal landscape is quite similar these days, in fact). Obviously, I did not have a job: I was ready for surprises...

I know this is a commonplace but there are songs that changed your life forever but mostly important is: can you remember the exact moment of the sudden musical blow? Can you remember your first time listening to Venus in Furs, How Soon is Now, Karma Police, Suzanne, Unfinished Sympathy, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Lazy Line Painter Jane et al? All of them made me feel the intensity of the waves ( a la Virginia Woolf). I remember the first time I listened to Little Fuffly Clouds: I just thought “What the hell was that??!!”

There is a sense of hope in every dawn. Light becomes a symbol over the trees, even the morning shadows are less chaotic than the sunset. I remember Gerard Manley Hopkins first stanza in That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection:

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- built thoroughfare:
heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.


The tough beautiful rhyme is heard among the clouds…

In 1991, Dr . Patterson created a world of samples (in fact, One Dove and Single Gun Theory were the innovative bands in the early 90’s) The orb’s adventures beyond the ultraworld is the house, the place, the morning, the fire of the dance music: almost two bloody hours of the best/beautiful dance electronic music ever made. The opening track Little Fluffy Clouds plays with a peculiar sample: the voice of the gifted Rickie Lee Jones saying:

we lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds...
they were long, clear...
the sunsets were...purple, and red, and yellow...
and the clouds would catch on fire…

…and then the arrival/the strength of dub/electronica/ straight to your ears: the Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth which Gerard Manley Hopkins beautifully described found its music. The silent clouds above you have unheard melodies but sometimes you are caught by the breeze.

Clouds and daylight, believe me, are not the same after these 4:27 minutes: welcome to the stellar lighthouse…

Little Fluffy Clouds, by The Orb

Powered by Castpost