The Comedy of Errors: The Orb - Blue Room [Part 1] (16 May 1992)

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Nothing too serious, I’m pleased to say, but this has been a trying week for me.  Money is tight, work is tough and Roy Wood’s nailed his colours to the mast for the Brexit Party.  I can only give thanks that in the background to all this, I’ve had Blue Room (Part 1) to fall back on.

In the days when it felt like dance music was going to dominate the charts for the rest of the decade, this was the movement’s Hey Jude moment.  At a shade under 40 minutes over its two parts, it was the longest single ever to chart.  What was the Blue Room? I’ve read that it’s probably a reference to a UFO holding centre at Wright-Paterson Air Force Base in Ohio, but the beauty of the track is that you can project any setting or context on to it.  It strikes me as nothing less than an ambient take on the creation and history of Earth up to and beyond 1992.  In the early minutes, The Orb seem to walk an even path between the scientific and the theological as they conjure up starfields coming into alignment to create the outline of the planet.  Seas and air-raid sirens gently collide with discreet guitar patterns and sound oscillations all underpinned by the sound of a creator (God?) catching each shooting star and hammering it together to create the Earth and that which will inhabit it.  Over there the sound of bird life; in another corner processed human voices - the air raid sirens giving an indication of the play that His creations will spend too much time engaging in.  And yet, the bubbling synths sound like nothing less than primordial swamps from which we will emerge through evolution and find our way.
By 7 minutes into part 1, Man’s sense of wonder at his surroundings and the outer universe is made manifest.  The ability to reason, observe and deduce intermingled with the first inklings to create music as the female vocalisations come in, courtesy of a track called The Creator no less!
Just after 9 minutes, Man becomes the creator both in the sense of building but also creating beats around those vocalisations and a Jah Wobble bassline.  The unending fight between Man’s impulse to discover and Man’s impulse to kill plays out as gunshots duel with B-movie dialogue from science fiction films excitedly announcing shuttle launches, but are those futuristic sounds those of a transmat beam taking Man to seek out new life and civilisations or ray guns that will lead man to kill and subjugate what it finds?
As Part 1 progresses the track takes a pessimistic view with animal cries set against the sound of impending industrialisation and a robotised voice incanting “Goodbye” But goodbye to what? A way of life? A home? This planet itself?  To find the answer, Peel suggested that he would play Part 2 on his programmes in the following week but it doesn’t appear that he did.  When I listened to the full track earlier no clear answer emerged until the final few minutes where the guitar tones of Steve Hillage take on the qualities of whale song and lead me to wonder, in the absence of dolphins, whether they are trying to warn us about the impending destruction of the planet.  If so, all we will leave behind are memories of Norma Jean.

If you would prefer a take on Blue Room that relies on less guesswork, I would entreat you to read 5:4’s article on the track’s 20th anniversary.



Videos courtesy of Nino (Part 1) and Laymante (Full version).