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More About

• Alex Paterson
• Thomas Fehlmann
• Jimi Kauty
• Billy MacKenzie
• Electronic Music

Dance music is seeping into every nook and cranny of contemporary life, soundtracking everything from network dramas and NFL touchdowns to ads for the latest Japanese import. It's hard to remember a time when phase delays, synth washes and drum beds were not a part of the media landscape, but a certain Dr. Alex Paterson is coming to Denver to jog our memories. His outfit, The Orb, with Autolump and Prayerbox, Wednesday, April 25, at the Ogden Theatre, coalesced in the late '80s, when the London dance-music scene was experimenting with a newfangled style called acid house. Paterson and his on-again-off-again cohorts -- including Youth (Killing Joke), Thomas Fehlmann (Sun Electric, Billy MacKenzie) and Jimi Kauty (The KLF) -- deploy a hazy shade of techno, one bathed in psychedelic, head-nodding loops and ambient dub excursions. From the Southwestern "Little Fluffy Clouds" to the whacked-out "Blue Room" to the pretty electro-pop of the new single "Once More," the Orb is a cornucopia of contemporary music beats, not to the mention the purveyor of one of the finest light shows going. After the first fifteen minutes, you'll realize exactly what Moby, Aphex Twin and the Chemical Brothers grew up on.