Little Fluffy Clouds

Little Fluffy Clouds is an incredibly relaxing song by The Orb. Featured in a Volkswagen Beetle commericial, just about everyone has heard a snippet of this song -- and probably likes it too. If you're looking for a mellow, relaxing track, grab your CD player and pump this one up - it's not one to disappoint. Of course, you could always go find it online with Napster, but I dont necessarily condone you doing so. Buy the album (The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld - 2 cd set) instead - its worth the few dollars it'll cost you if you're into ambient techno. My favorite mix of this song is The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds (Cumulus Mix). Absolutely soothing music.

If you were to find a depressed college student, on the verge of suicide, holding a bottle of H2SO4 in one hand and a bag of acetone peroxide in the other and play this song for him/her, they'd be skipping along the road to the nearest flower shop, hugging and groping at everyone they saw in no time at all.

It's the nature of the song. It makes you happy. It gives you a light feeling in your stomach, such that you feel that if you were to vomit out all the food you'd just eaten, you'd be lighter than air and you could float off and befriend all the little birds and flying insects and sky-gnomes.

I was in the middle of a multiple-day noder's block. I played the song on a very large stereo system; now I'm up and running again, minutes later.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE SONG

Quality Little Fluffy Clouds trivia

• The woman talking is in fact Rickie Lee Jones, from an interview that appeared in a 2CD promo box set issued by Geffen Records in 1989 in support of Rickie Lee Jones' "Flying Cowboys" album.
• The harmonica sample you can hear at the start of the tune is from Ennio Morricone's score for "Once Upon A Time In The West" (titled "The Man With The Harmonica")
• The melodic guitar riff in the background is from a Pat Metheny track
• There's an equally good remix of it on The Aubrey Mixes (The-Orb-Re-Mixes..geddit?) called the "Cumulo Nimbus Mix"
• The tune is in composed entirely of samples.

..and it's a f**cking great track..

This is the song that got me interested in electronic dance music... a long journey!

More trivia.....

The voice at the begining that asks the immortal question, "What were the skies like when you were young?" is LeVar Burton, aka Geordi LaForge of Star Trek fame, in his role as host of Reading Rainbow, a show on children's books on PBS. He's interviewing Rickie Lee Jones for the show.

There are several remixes out on vinyl, and one CD set of remixes that I know of. I also have a single-side white label remix called Little Fluffy Remix, that I suspect might be Danny Tenaglia. Who knows. My favorite remix is the Adam Freeland Tsunami mix, for its deep bass weirdness, though I also love love the Inner Master Mix.

When my daughter was very little, she called the song the Bilp-Bilps. If you know the song, you know why.