Grey Daze – Amends (2020)

Born Kitty Jean Bilbrew in 1923, White grew up in a musical family, her mother and father being vaudevillian performers. White was a well-trained vocalist with perfect pitch. She was also a good music reader, which allowed her to find studio work. After recording a couple of albums for EmArcy, White even appeared in a number of movies during the early 1950s, including King Creole (with Elvis Presley), Last Train from Gun Hill and The Old Man and the Sea.

Somewhere there exists an alternate reality in which the cinema, the old cinema, was never eroded by television — a world where teenage lovers still flee small towns for ninety minutes at a time to revel in the extravagant fantasies of the silver screen, movie theatre marquees on every block beckoning with the warm glow of incandescent bulbs & titles that evoke the mysteries found therein. Here the movies still bear the faint edge of danger & the unknown, the erotic thrill of a dream, everything raining color. Closer to Grey is the soundtrack of that world. A Technicolor epic in mellotron & theremin, organ & celeste. It sounds like a reverie — a communiqué from a more romantic place.

Really The Orb should need no introduction by now, but in essence they’re a rotating cast of members helmed by Paterson that began in 1988 and still thrives to this day. They were there since UK acid house day one, providing a unique ambient take on the musical milieu and soon rising to chart-topping, huge-venue-headlining prominence. They’ve released 19 albums plus EPs, singles, compilations and live recordings, influencing countless other musicians along the way. The Orb (Alex Paterson and Michael Rendall) release their new album on March 27th. The album features Youth (Killing Joke), Steve Hillage (Gong, System 7), Roger Eno (co-creator of the Apollo album with Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois) & Jah Wobble (PiL, Primal Scream Orb, Invaders of the Heart).