Bicycles & Tricycles is the sixth studio album from the Orb

The Orb

Throughout 1989, the Orb, along with Martin Glover, developed the musical genre of ambient house through the use of a diverse array of samples and recordings. The culmination of its musical work came toward the end of the year when the group recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1...

. It brought together The Orb's style of the early 1990s with current electronic music to mixed reactions. The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

praised Bicycles & Tricycles as being "inclusive, exploratory, and an enjoyable journey"; however, many other publications dismissed it as "stoner dub" and largely irrelevant to current electronic music culture. In addition to Paterson, Roome, Phillips, and Fehlmann, The Corpral contributed with vocoder affected singing and MC Soom-T provided lyrics and rapped. Though most critics found the rapping to be out of place, Jive Magazine

JIVE Magazine

JIVE Magazine is a popular-entertainment, technology, and urban-culture magazine. It publishes features, reviews, editorials, photo galleries, and art productions on the web as well as quarterly in print. The web edition is updated frequently. JIVE Magazine launched its website in August 2000...

described it as "the best track on [the album]" and "an amazing hip hop trip". Orb co-founder Jimmy Cauty, too, made a guest appearance as co-writer on Bicycles & Tricycles' "From a Distance". After departing from Island Records, The Orb released Bicycles & Tricycles in 2004 on Cooking Vinyl

Cooking Vinyl

Cooking Vinyl is a UK-based independent record company, founded in 1986. Its original orientation was toward contemporary folk music—notably Billy Bragg, and Michelle Shocked's Texas Campfire Tapes, recorded on a Sony Walkman, one of its first releases...

 in the United Kingdom and Sanctuary Records

Sanctuary Records

Sanctuary Records Group Limited was a record label based in the United Kingdom and a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Until June 2007, it was the largest independent record label in the UK and the largest independent music management company in the world...

 in the United States. To promote the album, The Orb began a UK tour with dub reggae artist Mad Professor

Mad Professor

Mad Professor is a dub music producer and engineer known for his original productions and remix work. He is considered one of the leading producers of dub music’s second generation and was instrumental in transitioning dub into the digital age. He is a prolific producer, contributing to or...

, who had remixed The Orb in the past. Though The Orb still pulled in large crowds, The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

described one London performance as "joyless" and stated that "few of the new tracks... really go anywhere". She also noted that Paterson seemed to be far more comfortable and happier to play material from Bicycles & Tricycles rather than older tracks. Paterson's biggest influences for the album were drum and bass

Drum and bass

Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...

 and trip hop

Trip hop

Trip hop is a music genre consisting of downtempo electronic music which originated in the early 1990s in England, especially Bristol. Deriving from "post"-acid house, the term was first used by the British music media and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat which...

 music.

Track listing

UK version

1. "Orb Is (Shopping Version)" – 4:49
2. "Aftermath
   Aftermath (The Orb song)
   "Aftermath" is a 2004 single by The Orb with vocals by MC Soom-T. The B-sides include a remix of the title track by Bus and a remix of "From a Distance" by Hybrid....
   
   " – 4:40
3. "The Land of Green Ginger (rmx)" – 4:01
4. "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
5. "Gee Strings" – 6:41
6. "Prime Evil" – 5:14
7. "Abstractions (Trance Pennine Express)" – 6:49
8. "L.U.C.A." – 5:23
9. "From a Distance (Blast Master v The Corpral)" – 3:55
10. "Tower Twenty Three (Spud v Kreature Mix)" – 6:33
11. "Kompania (Grooved Ware Mix)" – 6:19
12. "Dilmun" – 4:02

US version

1. "Orb Is (Shopping Version)" – 4:49
2. "Aftermath
   Aftermath (The Orb song)
   "Aftermath" is a 2004 single by The Orb with vocals by MC Soom-T. The B-sides include a remix of the title track by Bus and a remix of "From a Distance" by Hybrid....
   
   " – 4:40
3. "The Land of Green Ginger" – 4:01
4. "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
5. "Gee Strings" – 6:41
6. "Prime Evil" – 5:14
7. "Abstractions (Trance Pennine Express)" – 6:49
8. "From a Distance (Blast Master v The Corpral)" – 3:55
9. "Tower Twenty Three (Spud v Kreature Mix)" – 6:33
10. "Kompania (Grooved Ware Mix)" – 6:19
11. "Dilmun" – 4:02

Japanese version

1. "From a Distance (12" Z Mix)" – 5:32
2. "The Land of Green Ginger (rmx)" – 4:01
3. "Hell's Kitchen" – 5:23
4. "Gee Strings" – 6:41
5. "Prime Evil" – 5:14
6. "Orb Is" – 3:28
7. "Now Here" – 5:20
8. "Abstractions (Submarium Mix)" – 6:56
9. "L.U.C.A." – 5:23
10. "Compania" – 1:54
11. "Tower Twenty Three" – 7:50
12. "Dilmun" – 4:02