LX did a gig in Belgium yesterday and to be honest, I'm still baffled by it. He started with a rather anarchist version of a mile long lump of lard that took me about 5 minutes to recognise and added some new tunes afterwards. Anyway, I couldn't place them and to be honest they just seemed to be based upon simple techno beats without a lot of inventiveness. But then he decided to take a trip through memory lane and dig inside The 0rb's back catalogue: molten love (I think, it was from Orblivion anyway), blue room, perpetual dawn, fourth dimension (or at least something similar with some Gregorian monks singing), outlands, assassin, little fluffy clouds, star 6 & 7 8 9, a huge ever-growing pulsating brain etc... and ending with 111 that I have always found one of the lesser Cydonia tracks anyway. Nothing from daleth of elphame, although I hoped for red worm and cool harbour... but I have to confess, sometimes it was difficult to recognise the tracks due to The Orb's well studied massacre technique of interceding samples and tunes. Most of the time The Orb was a duo but on a couple of tunes a percussionist sat on the floor doing his thing (molten love?) and an extra bass/guitar player added some riffs here and there (blue room). LX seemed to enjoy himself and I even caught him smiling once or twice on the huge video screen (this means someone must have a tape)! So if anybody of Gardonia ever reads this: thank you LX and friends! A fluffy old dinosaur myself I couldn't stop wondering how much the BPM's have sped up throughout the ages and if I may utter one point of criticism this is well it. Nearly every track was larded with a deafening beat, the crowd seemed to enjoy it, I mostly enjoyed it, but it is a pity that even for LX ambient moods has become a dirty word. Loving U was degraded to five minutes of techno pounding (orbital dance mix and faster). If my memory is correct this was the track that LX once had to ask Jim Cauty to leave the beats off (or was it the other way 'round?). Also Blue Room was limited to 'girl wailing on a beat' and I surely would have appreciated some of the ambient parts of that tune (perhaps not all 45 minutes of it)... But when LX is magnificent, he is magnificent in a gifted way and apart from my rambling in the previous paragraph this must have been the best concert I saw this year. If Badorb ever decides to issue an Orb Live 2002 they can, without doubt, take this gig. Felix