Orange Peel - s/t. 1970 Germany

Orange Peel's sole album comprises of long tracks filled with improvisational Hammond organ and loud electric guitar solos. Similar to Eiliff and Inside era Eloy, though given the 1970 date: 1) Orange Peel were certainly groundbreaking for the burgeoning Krautrock movement and 2) they were more heavily influenced by the blues and American psychedelic than the two aforementioned groups. No doubt the UK bands such as Deep Purple weighed in heavily with Orange Peel as well. An extraordinary example of early Krautrock in the truest sense of the word. Long Hair LP release adds their rare 45 single, which displays their heavy blues rock disposition.

LP: 1970 Bellaphon
CD: 2003 CityStudio Music Productions
LP: 2011 Long Hair

Always a very rare album since I've been collecting from the 1980s, Orange Peel's one album was strictly fodder for bootleggers for many years. In fact, my introduction to the band was one of those pirate CDs in the mid 90s. When the CMP versions came out, there was quite a bit of doubt on the legitimacy of them. There wasn't a website, they were related to the dubious Green Tree, and the CDs came out in digi-pak's with not a lot of information, similar to the bootlegs of the day. I then inquired with a reliable music industry source in Germany, and sure enough, they are legit! They bought the rights to the Bellaphon catalog and released a few albums in 2003/2004 - and then disappeared (this is a different CMP to the label behind artists such as David Torn and Mark Nauseef). So I own that CD, and it remains the only legit CD released, which is kind of sad for such an important album. A couple of years after that, I lucked into an original LP on ebay for relatively cheap, and I will of course keep that for the duration. And finally, I did decide to go for the Long Hair LP reissue, mainly to hear the two bonus tracks, and to have the historical liner notes. And they did a fine job on both accounts. Now there is one small problem for purists, and I mentioned this on the Virus Thoughts review, and that is the colors are way too dark. The original - and the photo above is a good rendition of that - has some distinct colors to it. Otherwise they did faithfully reproduce the gatefold cover. It's just strange that the artwork is so dull on the reissues.