The Orb live: a thrilling journey to the ultraworld and back

Review of the Orb in concert at Liverpool O2 Academy as they release their Orboretum best-of album. Support act: Ozric Tentacles

Orboretum, the Orb's 33-track retrospective released this month, kicks off with "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld". It's not the largely beat-free 20-minute version familiar from Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, which helped millions of clubbers return to something approaching sanity, if not earth, in the 1990s. Alex Paterson, the man behind the Orb, has chosen the Orbital Dance Mix: though nothing to do with the band Orbital, it is upbeat and propulsive, and the dance-music theme continues throughout the collection: for a chillout band, they don't half make you want to dance. Which was an excellent thing when it came to their Liverpool show on November 16.

Another strand of the Orb's magpie sensibilities is apparent in Orboretum's third track: "Perpetual Dawn". This soulful composition is an eloquent reminder of the strong influence of dub reggae on the Orb's vein of ambient music: you only need to listen to some of the more spaced-out productions of, say, Dennis Bovell to see there is only a spliff paper between the two genres at times. And so it was fitting that a DJ was playing dub records as the Orb's setup was prepared.

Not that it took much preparation. After the maximal and rousing stage show by Ozric Tentacles, who are supporting the Orb on this winter tour, it was intriguing to see the Orb's setup limited to essentially a laptop and three Pioneer CD decks. But then Paterson and his collaborators have always been DJs as much as producers, and it made for a thrilling set where anything seemed possible -- including a moment of silence when the wrong button was pressed, and short bursts of unsynced beats that added to the organic feel. Paterson's esoteric collection of source material for samples is reputed to contain many collections of sound effects -- the origin of the crowing cockerels and F-14 jets that decorate Orb songs -- as well as A Conversation with Rickie Lee Jones (who perhaps did not think her analysis of Arizona's little fluffy clouds would become quite so widely appreciated) and a children's record called Bobby and Betty Go to the Moon. It is enthralling to see such material deployed live. It should be added that the body-shaking beats and evocative riffs, such as the mesmerising synth in "Pulsating Brain", are the Orb's own.

Paterson's latest sidekick is Michael Rendall, a much younger man with the air of an astrophysics postgrad student. He was mainly in charge of the laptop -- and occasionally, perhaps, tempering Paterson's more extravagant impulses. They worked so well together, you might almost think they were father and son. Rendall's background is a sound engineer, and he calmly kept the programmed sequences flowing with the virtuoso Paterson went at the Pioneers. The joy of this approach is that while the stems of the songs are instantly familiar, the live performances are always fresh.

The fine tunes were complemented by truly compelling visuals. A screen showed a continuous and continuously evolving chain of images that scrolled past on both sides. For instance, a magician character might loom up in the middle, holding a glass ball; as he came closer, it became apparent that the ball was, in fact, a universe that the viewer then plunged into. The effect was that you felt you were burrowing deeper and deeper into the Orbiverse. Towards the end of the show came the realisation that the images were now scrolling past in the opposite direction -- you were gradually leaving again.

The downside of this exhilarating device was that you suspected the set was drawing to a close. It felt too soon. But then that's probably always going to be the case for an act whose songs -- notably their Top 10 single, "Blue Room" -- are often only just getting going after quarter of an hour.

The Orb and Ozric Tentacles play Bristol O2 Academy on Nov 30; Oxford O2 Academy2 on Dec 6; and London O2 Forum Kentish Town on Dec 7