Author: dadmin

I hated playing live — every time was terror. I only ever wanted to be in the studio making tracks. When it was first brought up, I tried to say no. I was told you had to. Like the trucks and trucks and ridiculous budgets of The Orb tours — it was non-negotiable. Just part of the machine.

So there I was, doing live dub mixing, trying to stay focused, moving my foot side to side — maybe it was stimming, maybe I was just trying to ground myself in the noise and panic. I don’t even know what’s autistic and what isn’t. Maybe I really am just a spastic, like they said.

They thought it was hilarious. Called it “my spastic dance.” A joke. Bit of banter.

I laughed along because I had to. That’s what you do when you’re PDA, ADHD, autistic — and trapped in an environment that feeds on humiliation. You adapt. You survive. But it hurt. And that was the working atmosphere: even my coping mechanisms became punchlines — and then I needed more just to cope with the punchlines.

It wasn’t one moment. It became a regular feature of every tour. They’d point it out, laugh at it, laugh at me. I was doing everything I could just to hold it together.

That’s how it worked. You get humiliated, you’re expected to laugh. Then you’re trained to keep giving more of it back. Banter as behavioural control. That was The Orb.

There was nothing fluffy or ambient about The Orb once Alex’s mates got involved. When it was just me and him, it was OK — but once the others came in, it turned toxic, like a circus of humiliation.

They introduced me to cannabis and ecstasy. In fact, Martin Glover was the first person to ever give me drugs. I liked cannabis a lot — turns out it’s an actual medication for autism now. I’ve been prescribed it by five different doctors, including one on the NHS. Ecstasy was a bit heavier, but the “psychic warrior” machismo around us amplified everything, and I got stuck right in.

Once we sat in Alex’s house for two weeks straight taking E every day, just playing records. I got well into the decks — became a better mixer than Alex in about three minutes. In one recording — a sort of album-length DJ mix — he couldn’t beatmatch two tracks, so I had to do it for him.

If The Orb had started ten years ago and any of that behaviour leaked, we’d have been cancelled 3,000 times over. It was macho, abusive, and deeply misogynistic. Constant ribbing. Constant “you cunt,” “he’s a cunt,” “everyone’s a cunt.” That’s where I learned to swear — not just that it was allowed, but that it was currency. The more brutal your language, the more they liked it. It was rewarded. Encouraged. Back then, it passed as normal.

But I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t a punk and I was more than ten years younger than them. I was sensitive. I had to adapt to survive. That meant learning to hit back — to be sharper, meaner, quicker. And when I got good at it, they didn’t like it.

It wasn’t overt violence — it was “banter.” But it was constant. When you’re the youngest in a group of older men who’ve already decided what you are, that kind of shit warps you. I thought they were laughing with me. Most of the time they were laughing at me. I was too young to know the difference. Too trusting. Too hopeful.

They didn’t just isolate me from the industry — they rewired how I thought, how I spoke, how I saw myself. Every attack was passed off as humour. Every boundary was treated as weakness. That erosion adds up. And then they call you the unstable one.

The truth is: I have to be fierce online — because I’ve been attacked non-stop for years. People think I’m aggressive because of how I write. But in real life, I’m softly spoken. Dry. Funny. That’s not just opinion — it’s literally in my diagnosis.

The public only sees meltdowns — not because I’m inherently unstable, but because I was pushed past my limits again and again. Years of fraud, humiliation, coercion. Every reissue, every so-called “tribute,” every remix they put out without me — it’s another blow to my mental health.

So yeah, online I sound like I’m built for war. But that’s because I was. Those early experiences shaped everything — older punks, surviving on ego, ridicule, bravado. That was the culture. If you were sensitive, you got torn apart. So I learned to swear like a bastard, to deflect with humour, to hit back twice as hard.

But that wasn’t me. It was performance. Masking. Survival mode.
Because underneath all that, I was just an autistic kid trying to make music.

1. The Setup: 17 and Vulnerable

I was 17 years old when I met them. I’d just broken away from a strict Jehovah’s Witness upbringing. I was naive, idealistic, and I believed what people told me. They told me I was talented. They told me I was lucky. They told me this was how it worked. To give you an idea of how young I was I had been only a matter of months out of school. I did 3 months in a carpet warehouse at 16 then I moved straight into a Battersea recording studio because I was attacked at work.

By the time I left The Orb at 21 (ish not sure), I had been homeless on and off, even while touring — sleeping on floors, in empty houses, living in precarity while others profited from my work. I was often given no choice but to cover absurd costs for gigs I didn’t agree with. I said I didn’t want huge trucks, light shows, egos — they said you have to do it, it’s promotion. But none of it paid. None of it was mine. I never earned a penny from the gigs.

There is something deeply disturbing about industry pros over ten years older than a 17 year old kid, feeding em drugs and getting them into fraudulent contracts. These gigs I paid for definitely did promote the name but its questionable whether it was the trucks and trucks full of shit that achieved that. The lighting guys (SPOTCO) who were all cocaine addicts charging 10’s of thousands, and everyone else took the piss. Presumably the coke budget was included.

There’s only a few people I look back fondly on still. Dj Lewis and Mr Murray our tour manager.

2. The Pattern: Lies, Control, and Legal Fraud

I signed a contract with Alex for a 50/50 split on everything through Big Life. But the reality was nothing like that.

Adam Morris, Alex’s manager and friend, hated that I was part of the band — because it cost him money. I was never given 50% of the Orbmusic company. I wasn’t even told that the money wasn’t mine.

At one point we received £250,000 from Chrysalis. Adam’s wife tried to claim ownership of it via Orbmusic, which I never had a share in. I found her memo in boxes of WAU/Mr. Modo documents Adam later gave me — a company I was also never given 50% of.

Instead, I was fed a narrative:
“The publishing is for all the musicians on the next six albums.”
That’s not just false — it’s fraud.

The narrative was delivered to me by Adam and Alex while I was working in the studio — which I rarely left. It then spread through Alex’s circle of friends, who I also spent time with, each repeating the same line to me separately. It was clearly coordinated — presumably under Alex’s or Adam’s instruction, or both.

Adam later claimed that my money ended up in an account belonging to Alexis Grower, who is now deceased. Before his death, Alexis denied ever acting for me — but I have documents proving he did, albeit without my express permission. He also acted for both Adam and Alex, which is a clear conflict of interest and completely illegal.

Eventually, 30 years later, Adam apologised and gave me £1,000 when I was destitute. But not long later, he flipped again, saying the money still wasn’t mine.

3. The Collapse: Drugs, Violence, and Isolation

They told me you make more money if you sign to your own label.
But it wasn’t my label.
Adam and Martin Glover took the profits. I got nothing.

They told me to start a publishing company because you make more money if you have your own publishing company.
But it was locked down by Adam and his wife, who guarded it obsessively.

Meanwhile, the environment became toxic. Alex’s drinking and cocaine use spiralled. Every gig became a slurred rant about his mother. At Roskilde Festival, he punched his girlfriend Lisa in the face. I didn’t see it — but everyone in our 20-person crew was talking about it the same night. His only explanation: “I was on whiskey.”

During every tour Alex slept with whoever he could, bragging about it while snorting cocaine in toilet stalls and signing women’s breasts. Then we’d go back to his house and see Lisa, and I’d have to act like everything was fine. It felt fake. I felt terrible for her. Meanwhile, I was the weird autistic one — overlooked, awkward, and totally outside the social rules they all seemed to understand. It only added to the alienation.

Sadly Lisa died at a young age. She was a deeply funny, beautiful person. She was buried with a buddha ring I gave her in India. She got Alex back by fucking another guy right under the stage in Manchester while we were playing. Good on her.

Drugs were everywhere. I had never even seen cocaine before I met Alex and Martin. I had a religious upbringing. I was 18, 19, naive. But they introduced it, procured it, and mocked me if I hesitated:
“You’re a pussy if you can’t take your drugs.”
It was machismo, pressure, and humiliation. They encouraged it.
Later, their fans online would attack and blame me for the breakup:
“It was Kris’ cocaine use.”
Where was I supposed to get cocaine from? I was 19, i didn’t know anyone who sold cocaine. They were the ones handing it out.

NO FUN was an interesting end to all of this and had parallels to the sex pistols break up. The punching, the fraud, the drugs. the drug fuelled ranting etc. the NO FUN thing where I did a shit take and they all stopped me from doing it again etc. It was all coercion and fraud.

4. The Final Betrayal: Moral Rights Stripped

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. I said:
“I don’t want anything to do with The Orb anymore.”
I asked for my name to be removed — not for money, but to escape the humiliation of watching my work be altered without my consent. That was my red line: no interference with my creative decisions. It was the one thing I asked when signing.

Instead, they twisted it into:
“He doesn’t want the money either.”
And they had me sign over 100% of control over my orb material to Universal (instead of removal of attribution) — during a complete breakdown, with no lawyer, no protection, no review. A contract that should never have been accepted. I think its called unconscionable in legal terms.

They kept performing my work live — standing in front of it as if they made it.
They continued to claim credit.
They ignored my moral rights, erased my authorship, and carried on.

5. The rest of the Orb idiot crew.

Alex and all his mates he started to employ with my money bombarded me daily when i was trying to make music. They started to complain that i wanted to concentrate not understanding they were ruining the music by being around. Alex made an office in the studio and employed two of his friends to work there. There was another idiot called Fil who seemed to be around purely just to make tea and piss about. Alex employed pretty much everyone he knew with my money and had them just hanging around being paid. A drummer was flown in from America just to hang around and wait for me to be ready to put him on one track. He sucked tbh and he also happened to be Alexs friend. He wanted to give my cash to everybody in the world but me.

6. Alex’s incompetence in the studio

Alex barely showed up — and when he did, he was either asleep, pissing about or complaining about how long everything took. He was useless in the studio. I have a second witness who can confirm this.

Somewhere on MusicBrainz, he’s listed as a “sample manipulator.” In early press, he talks about how The Orb had moved from just using samples to manipulating them — but that was me saying that. He was repeating my words, not doing the work. There are multiple instances in the press of Alex repeating exactly what I was saying about what I wanted to do with the music.

7. Why I’m Speaking Now

Because they never expected me to survive long enough to tell the truth.

They built a career on my back. They fed their egos with my silence.
They traded off my name, my sound, my work — while calling me unreliable, unstable, and ungrateful.

And now everyone and their dog is turning up to re-release it all yet again.

But I was a kid.
And what they did was coercion, fraud and abuse.

This is my record. My name. My history.
And I’m taking it back — in full.

8. Setting the Record Straight on the “Begging” Claim in ‘Babble n Ting‘

Ignoring that the title doubles down on the appropriation of The Orb which obviously nobody wants to talk about, there are extremely problematic parts of the book which misrepresent what I did in The Orb. e.g. Most of the book covers the exact period where I made the music — but my name is mentioned once. The rest just says ‘we’: we did this, we did that. But we didn’t do shit. I DID. If anyone else was really involved it was Greg Hunter not Alex Paterson and I recently found out that there were active attempts to keep us apart afterwards because we could have legitimately taken the name. Greg was part of the main vibe of the good Orb stuff, working with Greg was always enjoyable, most of the Orb sessions were 75% constant hilarity and 25% work. The sessions were almost all laughing. The orb was a punk band, no doubt about it. Fuck this ambient shit 🙂 I love Greg and I love working with him. We are both deeply neurodivergent though and we both have our issues.

In Alex Paterson’s book, there’s a passing reference to me “begging for work” — supposedly based on an old NME article about me selling a gold Primal Scream record. This was written by Chris Needs, which I believe to be deeply misleading and defamatory. Here’s what actually happened:

I was broke, and I needed cash. I put the record up for sale in Loot. A journalist rang me up and convinced me I could get more for it if I did a photo feature. This shows just how fucking naive I am. I said OK — on the condition that it not be framed as a sob story or tragic artist cliché. He ignored that, used my exact words from the call as the headline, and published my phone number in the magazine.

I was flooded with prank calls, abuse, and mocking choruses of “Where’s your dole cheque now?”

That wasn’t “begging for work.” That was someone trying to survive, getting manipulated by a journo, and then misrepresented by people who’ve spent decades trying to erase me from the record.

Universal Music Group is welcome to disagree — in court. But I hold the original WAU/MR MODO boxes — documents that show fraud, coercion, and the systematic removal of my rights. UMG has no claim over my work. My publishing is not signed to anyone. Any fraudulent registrations must be corrected through PRS and PPL, and any back payments must be returned.

If you’re an IP lawyer — particularly with experience in music and disability rights — and you’re willing to help, please contact: admin@therob.lol

This isn’t about the past. It’s about reclaiming what was always mine. I’m not asking for permission. I’m stating what’s mine.

At the lowest point in my life — after years of watching my work with The Orb be degraded, altered, and treated with contempt — I said: “I don’t want anything to do with The Orb anymore.” What I meant was clear: I wanted distance. I wanted no further involvement in something that was hurting me. I wanted my name removed — a moral right I was entitled to. This is also a function of my disability and I have to eject things that are causing immense mental harm.

I have a history and other events to do with this function that have fucked my life up in many other ways.

What ended up happening was the opposite of my intention, instead of removing my name they removed my rights. They continued to use my name, my photo on their stuff in a long list of other collaborators like I wasn’t the one person in control of the Orb while I was there. That’s one of the tactics. Bury me in a bunch of other producers.

I asked because I had one non-negotiable red line from the very beginning:
No interference in my creative decisions. No record label involvement in my music. That was the only thing I insisted on when I signed.
And it was the one thing they systematically broke.

But instead of honouring that, they twisted it.
They took my words — spoken during a mental health crisis — to mean I no longer wanted anything:
Not my name. Not my credit. Not my royalties. Not even my rights.

And they acted on it.

I was pressured into signing everything over to Universal — while homeless and sleeping on the floorboards of a near-stranger’s empty flat. I didn’t have a lawyer and I didn’t understand what was happening. I was exhausted, isolated, and completely worn down. What I wanted was to remove my name from it completely, which I believe is a legal right but hey ho Universal and ‘the friend group’ guided me into something entirely different, like fucking sharks smelling blood. Now I am putting this online I think its FUCKING clear that this is not legal.

Universal and anyone in the Orb didn’t question this of course. They jumped at the chance.
A contract no sane person would sign — treated as binding. I think its called unconscionable in legal terms.

This wasn’t a negotiation.
This was a crisis exploited as an exit clause.

After removing my control, they continued to play my work live, claim credit for it, and profit from it — all without permission. My attempt to reclaim dignity and distance was used as a justification to erase me completely, financially and creatively. Some people on the net say things like ‘If someone signs a contract then its their own fault i have no sympathy” etc. But I was literally ejecting something that was causing psychological harm.

Publishing money was supposed to be the writer’s share.
Instead, a manager took 20%, the registrations were completely fraudulent — and when I said no more, they took that, too.

Someone asked for more truth. OK. This is a letter from Greg Hunter, professional sound engineer, who worked with The Orb from 1990–1992. It was submitted to PRS in 2023 to clarify who actually created the music. This statement is unedited, in Greg’s own words.

Commentary on Greg Hunter’s Statement

Greg’s letter outlines the basic studio structure — and it matches my experience exactly. If anything, I’d say it gives Alex slightly more credit than I personally witnessed. He occasionally approached the mixing desk and tried to participate, often by mimicking what I was doing, but he wasn’t familiar with the gear and it usually disrupted the workflow. On many sessions, I didn’t let him near the desk. He may have adjusted the odd aux send once or twice, but it was minimal — more about wanting to “be seen” doing something than actually shaping the track, especially since by the time he got involved, everything had already been built and set up.

Greg didn’t create all the effects, but the ones he did were always excellent — and we collaborated on a lot of that work. On U.F.Orb, Greg was a major creative force on the mixing front and absolutely nailed the effects side, possibly downplaying his role in the EQ’ing and balancing side on that. In the Satellite Serenade mix, Alex’s only input was adding a David Attenborough sample, which he found funny because of the phrase “erecting mud huts.” That was the extent of his contribution.

That’s what we mean when we talk about authorship — not just who was in the room, but who actually created the music, made the production decisions, built the track, and shaped the mix.

A record label is attempting to illegally use my track “Satellite Serenade,” a collaboration between myself and Keiichi Suzuki, without permission or consent. Doug Shipton and “Strictly Kev” are behind this release, which they claim is “completely legal” – this is incorrect.

THE LEGAL VIOLATIONS:

Copyright Infringement: I co-created “Satellite Serenade” and retain all rights. I never signed my publishing to Universal Music. All contracts with The Orb expired years ago, (none of them legally enforceable anyway – which i am going to show shortly) making any past agreements void. They have no legal basis to use this work.

False Representation: The release gives me zero credit as co-creator and implies they own/created the work. This is fraudulent misrepresentation of authorship.

Their Own Admissions: They admit they didn’t ask my permission. They’re openly taunting me about using my work without authorization while claiming it’s legal – a direct contradiction.

THE SMOKING GUN:

Either Universal Music is lying about owning publishing rights they don’t have, or someone has been collecting my royalties under false pretenses for 35 years. Both scenarios are illegal.

THE BROADER PATTERN:

This represents the music industry’s continued exploitation of disabled artists. When I explained that The Orb involved criminal acts of coercive control against me as an autistic person, their response was dismissive contempt. Ninja Tune’s Matt Black is reportedly “totally down” with this exploitation.

MY POSITION:

I DO NOT CONSENT to this release. I DO NOT CONSENT to being associated with these people. The casual dismissal of disability exploitation while stealing my work is morally bankrupt. This has caused me such distress I’ve stopped making music entirely.

ADDITIONAL LEGAL VIOLATIONS:

Commercial Exploitation Without Consent: They’re selling my track as part of a commercial compilation with merchandise (gatefold sleeve, T-shirt designs, illustrated compendium) – clear commercial exploitation of my copyrighted work.

False Attribution/Curation Claims: Press copy states tracks were “picked and arranged by Mario, David and Kevin” from “their collections” – falsely implying ownership/curatorial rights over my work.

Historical Misrepresentation: They’re rewriting history, inserting my independently created work into their Telepathic Fish narrative as if it belonged to their scene, while systematically erasing me from the story.

Calculated Erasure: Press coverage lists my track first but mentions zero creators. My work appears to be a key selling point, making the erasure commercially motivated and deliberate.

THE REMIX EXPLOITATION RACKET:

This release also endorses the record industry’s systematic theft through “remix” publishing scams. In the 90s, labels would commission remixes then register themselves as 100% publishing owners, claiming the new work was “derivative” of their original – even when the remix bore no resemblance to the source material. This was bog standard – they would all do it.

I would completely transform tracks, writing new melodies, arrangements, and sound design that made them commercially viable. Yet I’d receive 0% publishing because labels classified my electronic contributions as “non-musical” / simple motifs, sound design or anything else rather than say the word “composition.” They hired me specifically for my mixing desk skills, sound design, and track-building abilities – then used semantic games to steal the publishing from the very creativity they were paying for.

Even on remixes where I wrote everything, I have often got zero publishing rights. They’d claim the basic elements they gave me at the beginning – which I often erased entirely – warranted 100% ownership of the completely new work I’d created.

“Satellite Serenade” is roughly 50/50 between myself and Keiichi Suzuki, with the latter half featuring little to none of his input. But under the remix exploitation model, my contributions are probably not even registered in the PRS or PPL.

By endorsing this release, they’re endorsing decades of systematic publishing theft from electronic artists whose work was deliberately misclassified to deny us our rights. It’s the same exploitative mindset that created The Orb situation in the first place.

They can keep their shitty cover and drink their black worm jism – but they cannot steal my work.