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.
