''Moonbuilding 2703 AD'' is the thirteenth studio album from

ambient house Ambient house is a downtempo subgenre of house music that first emerged in the late 1980s, combining elements of acid house and ambient music. The genre developed in chill-out rooms and specialist clubs as part of the UK's dance music scene. It ...

duo

the Orb The Orb are an English electronic music group founded in 1988 by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty. Known for their psychedelic sound, the Orb developed a cult following among clubbers "coming down" from drug-induced highs. Their influential ...

. It is the first album they released through the

Kompakt Kompakt ( Labelcode: LC 12012) is a Cologne-based electronic music independent record label and vinyl/CD distributor, owned by Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Mayer and Jürgen Paape. They specialize in microhouse and minimal techno, and are known ...

label since the 2005 release of ''

Okie Dokie It's The Orb on Kompakt ''Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt'' is the seventh studio album by English electronic music group the Orb, released on 8 November 2005 by Kompakt. It features new material in addition to new versions of their previous Kompakt releases. Critica ...

''. It was released on 22 June 2015.

Reception

''Moonbuilding 2703 AD'' has received positive reviews from music critics, with some saying it is the band's best album in over 20 years. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 77, based on 16 reviews, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews". In his 4 star review for

Record Collector ''Record Collector'' is a British monthly music magazine focussing on rare and collectable records, and the bands who recorded them. It was founded in September 1979 and distributes worldwide. It is promoted as "the world’s leading authority o ...

, Phil Smith says that the album has "Walloping techno rhythms simply step in and out of pretty melodies, pleasing textures and grainy sample loops" and concluding the review by saying that "While the album is relatively low-key and meandering, that's arguably what we want from The Orb – and hence it might just be the one you've been waiting on from them for 20 years." Barney Harsent of The Arts Deck said that ''Moonbuilding 2703 AD'' is "without doubt, the most coherent offering from the Orb (currently composed of Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann) since '' Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld''" and also said that their "latest offering is similarly hurtling through space once more, and reminding us of their conceptual debut that slapped us around our collective face back in 1991. It feels like a similar event." Gavin Miller of Drowned in Sound in his 8/10 review said that ''Moonbuilding 2703 AD'' is "an album heaving with ideas, but just coherent enough to stick together as one piece of work" and went on to say that the album is a "great little re-introduction to all things Orb." Benjamin Aspray of

Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New Yor ...

starts off his 3.5 stars out of 5 review by saying "With ''Moonbuilding 2703 AD'', the Orb makes a full circle back to the long-form conceptual terrain of 1991's game-changing ''Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld'' and its follow-up, ''

U.F.Orb ''U.F.Orb'' is the second studio album by English electronic music group the Orb. It was released on 6 July 1992 as their last work with record label Big Life. Upon its release, the album reached No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart. The music database A ...

''. The album sustains a progressive composition over four distinct parts, forgoing instant gratification for slow builds and subtle variations, culminating in the Orb's most cohesive work in ages." He ends the review for the album saying "It's never quite a tour de force, but as a union of the Orb's heady roots with their spiritual ascendants' minimalist ethos, the album is a consistently satisfying groove machine, and a worthy entry to the upper ranks of the Orb canon."

Track listing

;Notes * "Dilla's Moon Quake" is not included in the iTunes track listing.

Personnel

The Orb *

Alex Paterson Alex Paterson (also known as Dr Alex Paterson, born Duncan Alexander Robert Paterson; 15 October 1959) is an English musician and co-founder of ambient house group the Orb, in which he has worked since its inception. Life and work Paterson at ...

–

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stat ...

Thomas Fehlmann Thomas Fehlmann (born 1957) is a Swiss composer/producer who lives in Berlin, Germany, and has been active in electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based m ...

– production

Charts

References

{{Authority control 2015 albums The Orb albums