Synopsis

Set inside a stark psychiatric asylum, the video follows unwilling patients subjected to bizarre experiments by white-coated staff. The treatment becomes increasingly surreal as the subjects are strapped down and bombarded by the Orb's heavy electronic sound, with the music seemingly causing their minds, identities, and even their "marbles" to come loose. Combining live-action institutional imagery with a deliberately absurd visual tone, the clip evokes secret mind-control research while matching the track's disorienting, playful energy.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was inspired by MK-ULTRA, the CIA's controversial mind-control research program.

• Its asylum setting gives visual form to the song's title and its themes of altered perception, experimentation, and psychological instability.

• The production was handled by H-Gun Labs, the company associated with the video's creator Benjamin Stokes.

• The video was produced in the United States in 1997 and was listed by the International Film Festival Rotterdam as a four-minute work presented on Betacam SP PAL.

• "Toxygene" began as a commissioned remix of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Oxygene 8." The Orb's radically reconstructed version used only fragments of the original and was released independently after Jarre declined to issue it as part of the planned remix project.

• The single became The Orb's highest-charting release in the United Kingdom, reaching No. 4 in February 1997.

• The video was later included among the band's promotional work on the DVD edition of the retrospective collection "History of the Future."