Bicycles & Tricycles

Studio album by The Orb

Released

UK: May 2004
US: 13 July 2004

Genre

Electronica, dub, house, breakbeat

Length

UK: 63:55
US: 58:26

Label

UK: Cooking Vinyl
US: Sanctuary/BMG Records

Producer

Alex Paterson, Thomas Fehlmann, John Roome

The Orb chronology

Cydonia
(2001)

Bicycles & Tricycles
(2004)

Okie Dokie It's The Orb on Kompakt
(2005)

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	61/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Almost Cool	6.5/10
Pitchfork Media	6.5/10
The Guardian
Rolling Stone
Release Magazine	7/10
About.com
Slant Magazine
URB
Resident Advisor

Bicycles & Tricycles is the sixth studio album from the Orb. It brought together The Orb's style of the early 1990s with current electronic music to mixed reactions.The Daily Telegraph praised Bicycles & Tricycles as being "inclusive, exploratory, and an enjoyable journey"; however, many other publications dismissed it as "stoner dub" and largely irrelevant to current electronic music culture. In addition to Paterson, Roome, Phillips, and Fehlmann, The Corporal contributed with vocoder affected singing and MC Soom-T provided lyrics and rapped. Orb co-founder Jimmy Cauty, too, made a guest appearance as co-writer on Bicycles & Tricycles' "From a Distance". After departing from Island Records, The Orb released Bicycles & Tricycles in 2004 on Cooking Vinyl in the United Kingdom and Sanctuary Records in the United States. To promote the album, The Orb began a UK tour with dub reggae artist Mad Professor, who had remixed The Orb in the past. Though The Orb still pulled in large crowds, The Guardian described one London performance as "joyless" and stated that "few of the new tracks... really go anywhere". They also noted that Paterson seemed to be far more comfortable and happier to play material from Bicycles & Tricycles rather than older tracks. Paterson's biggest influences for the album were drum and bass and trip hop music.

...
Wikipedia