Bicycles & Tricycles is the sixth studio album from English ambient house pioneers The Orb, originally released on May 3, 2004 via Cooking Vinyl, and reissued on April 18, 2026 as a limited-edition double vinyl pressing — on red and black smoke vinyl, housed in a wide-spine spot-glossed sleeve with printed inners — that also includes the bonus track "Now Here," previously exclusive to the Japanese release. The album reunites Orb mainstay Alex Paterson with a roster of long-term collaborators including German producer Thomas Fehlmann, Simon Phillips, John Roome, and KLF co-founder Jimmy Cauty, bringing together the group's ambient house sensibility from the early 1990s with the electronic music currents of 2004, most notably drum and bass and trip-hop. Record Store Day describes The Orb as "considered the originators of ambient house music and catalysts to the rise of electronic music in the charts," and Bicycles & Tricycles reflects a band still very much steeped in their own established aesthetic.At eleven tracks and running as a double album, the record moves across a wide range of moods and tempos. The BBC praised it as a demonstration of "why The Orb are still masters of the beautifully chilled and deconstructed dub," singling out the downbeat electro of "The Land of Green Ginger," the dub-inflected "Tower Twenty Three," the club-friendly "Gee Strings," and the genre-colliding "Hell's Kitchen" — which features MC Soom-T on the album's lead single "Aftermath," which reached No. 8 on the UK dance chart. The BBC concluded that while it may not reach the raw experimentalism of the band's early work, it is "representative of where enthralling electronica currently resides." Critical reception at the time was mixed, with some finding it scattered and others embracing it as a solid return to form — but the 2026 vinyl reissue has given listeners fresh occasion to reassess a record that fits naturally within the broader arc of one of electronic music's most distinctive careers.
