Founding frontman Alex Paterson and a band of Orb associates will take their eccentric electronica on the road for 12 North American dates – marking their first Stateside outing in four years.

The Orb will squeeze an April 4 Chicago gig in the midst of a United Kingdom outing, then return to American soil April 12 to formally launch the tour in Florida. The group stays on the road through April 28, when they finish with a gig at the Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, Calif.

The Orb grew out of England’s fascination with Chicago house music, slowing it down and all but creating the ambient/trance genre endemic to raves and the dance scene’s “chill-out” rooms.

Since its formation in 1988, the group has adapted the spacey music for live performance and borrowed heavily from Pink Floyd – floating pigs are regularly seen at Orb shows.

The new tour will support the long-delayed Cydonia – recorded two years ago but held back due to record label complications. The disc was just released in February, but Paterson has another album in the can, though it won’t be distributed in the usual way.

Paterson has set up his own Web site – www.badorb.com – to distribute the songs, which he will post three at a time. The number of pressings will depend on the number of orders. Once a track is pressed, it will be deleted from the site.

He’s enlisted some friends to join him in the venture: Other artists releasing tracks March 25 through Bad Orb are Ayumi Hamasaki and S.E. Berlin, an alias of German techno duo Sun Electric.