Little Fluffy Clouds

"Little Fluffy Clouds" is a single released by the British ambient house group the Orb. It was originally released in November 1990 on the record label Big Life and peaked at number 87 on the UK Singles Chart. The Orb also included it on their 1991 double album The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. "Little Fluffy Clouds" was re-released several times with different B-sides, with its 1993 re-release reaching number 10 in the UK.
It ranked number 275 in NME's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Pitchfork Media ranked it number 40 on their list of the "Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s".
Alex Paterson had previously worked with Jimmy Cauty as the Orb. Upon Cauty's departure from the Orb, Paterson began work on "Little Fluffy Clouds" with ex-Killing Joke member Martin "Youth" Glover. However, because of other production obligations, Glover did not become a permanent member of the Orb. Kris "Thrash" Weston joined the Orb soon after. Weston mixed and engineered several versions of "Little Fluffy Clouds", including the version on The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.
"Little Fluffy Clouds" makes extensive use of clips from an interview with American singer Rickie Lee Jones in which she recalls picturesque images of her childhood. The samples are widely but incorrectly believed to have come from a conversation between Jones and LeVar Burton on the children's television program Reading Rainbow, The samples come from a CD of interviews with Rickie Lee Jones included with the box set promoting Jones' album Flying Cowboys. The interviewer is not credited on the recording or in the boxed set's liner notes but is identified as Carl Arrington in the box set's cover letter.
Jones' record company initially sued Big Life over the unauthorized use of her voice. Eventually, a settlement was reached out of court for an undisclosed sum of money for use of her voice on the Orb's recording. In 2016, Paterson said the record company paid $5,000 to use the sample. Asked about the sample in an interview years later, Jones referred to the Orb as "those fuckers."
The song also uses a harmonica sample from Ennio Morricone's "Man with a Harmonica" (from the film Once Upon a Time in the West) and parts of Electric Counterpoint, a piece for multi-tracked guitars composed by Steve Reich and recorded by Pat Metheny. According to Glover, the inspiration for the track came when an Orb fan who worked in a Birmingham record shop sent him a tape with Electric Counterpoint on one side and the Rickie Lee Jones interview on the other. Reich was "genuinely flattered" by the Orb's use of his work and instructed his record company not to sue. Despite this, the Orb did receive a letter from Reich's lawyers several years later, but Paterson described Reich as "a proper gentleman: he wanted 20% from then on and asked us to do a remix of one of his tunes, which we did". Alex Paterson also suggested that the drum track is sampled: "If anyone actually knew where the drums on 'Little Fluffy Clouds' came from, they'd all just die, but I'm not at liberty to tell. Record companies have always warned me, 'Don't tell anyone where you got your samples until we get them cleared!'". He later said that the drum track was sampled from Harry Nilsson's album Nilsson Schmilsson, and others have specifically identified this as a sample of Jim Gordon's drum solo from "Jump Into the Fire", slowed down approximately from 45 to 33 rpm, starting at 3:58. The use of a slowed-down "Jump Into the Fire" was acknowledged by Paterson in a 2016 interview with The Guardian, in which he also said the track included a Lee "Scratch" Perry sample.
In 2006 a previously uncredited sample from "Little Fluffy Clouds" was recognised by MTV label director Dan Waite, who identified the first voice heard on the song as that of his cousin John Waite. A 1990 John Waite BBC Radio 4 broadcast for the programme You and Yours was sampled and features at the beginning of the track. John Waite can clearly be heard saying, "Over the past few years, to the traditional sounds of an English summer - the drone of lawnmowers, and the smack of leather on willow - has been added a new noise...". In 2013, the Orb's management asked John Waite to join them on their 25th Anniversary tour to read the classic line live on stage.
"Little Fluffy Clouds" reached number 87 on the UK Singles Chart and was a dancefloor success. After the popularity of following Orb albums, "Little Fluffy Clouds" was re-released several times, including a 1993 edition which peaked at number 10 on the UK chart.
In 2010, Pitchfork Media ranked "Little Fluffy Clouds" number 40 on their list of the "Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s". In 2014, it was ranked number 275 in NME's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 2025, Billboard magazine ranked the song number 99 in their "The 100 Best Dance Songs of All Time".