awol

Radioactive Records are pleased to present Black Orchids - "AWOL" now available on CD for the first time.

Black Orchids hailed from Charleston, West Virginia and consisted of John Wehde, Rob Hamer and Paul Bennington. In 1974 they pressed "AWOL", their sole output, on their own Black Orchids Records label in a tiny edition of 200 copies. The album came in a plain white sleeve, shrinkwrapped with the title and band info written on the outside of the shrink with a marker pen. You can imagine how many of these survived intact! The album consists of one track "AWOL" which was recorded live and being 29 minutes long was spread over the two sides of the LP. This CD version has the track rejoined as one continuous piece.

Black Orchids were a power trio and present here an instrumental only journey of psychedelic hard rock that is more Cream than Hendrix. For the most part the music is a heavy Blues jam with many tempo changes and plenty of feedback. There is a connection here between the old Progressive style and the New Wave of music, at times they sound like a Curtis-less Joy Division. There is also a feeling here of UFOs 2nd album the space rock jam "Flying". Overall a recommended and rare piece of psychedelia.