Orchid-Star was put together by Pete Ardron at the start of 2005, initially as a vehicle to perform music he had written for DJ sets, mostly for chill-out rooms.
The sound is lush and colourful with a strong world music influence – Indian, Arabic, Celtic, African and more - fused with everything from psychedelic chill and dub to drum & bass and funk. Part electronic, part live, their revolving line-up includes vocalists – Myo and Samanta Ray, guitar & bass – Pierre Luigi, electric fiddle – Kait Farbon, full-size marimba – Becky Dell, percussionists – Jon Bongly, Sean Spindrift and Becky, keyboards - Pete, dancers SandRa and Diane Everitt and occasionally more.
Orchid-Star have featured an increasing list of guest performers from here and abroad, vocalists, instrumentalists, dancers and visual artists, giving a real variety to their shows, performing with anything from 3-10 people on stage.
Both core members and guests have diverse musical roots, several with classical training and members with backgrounds in rock, reggae, soul, funk, jazz, world and other fields, having played with people as varied as Frank Sinatra(!), Jimi Hendrix(!), Tim Finn of Crowded House, True Life Confessions, Basement Jaxx, Soul2Soul, Hallucinogen and Stomp.
Pete's last major project before this was Glow, well known on the global-dance/world-music scene in the late 90s and with whom several other Orchid-Star members also served time.
By the summer of 2005, with a regular core established, the band had started to take on its own sound, identity and direction, moving away from the initial plan and concentrating more on the more up-tempo dancy tracks – a trend reflected in the first new tracks to be written specifically for the Orchid-Star.
Highlights of the first year included the main stages at Kingston Green Fair, the London Green Lifestyles Show and Big Green Gathering and the main headline slot on the largest of Glastonbury Festival's fringe stages, Croissant Neuf where the Orchid-Star and Pete also received about 3 hours of airplay on the festival's radio station, Radio Avalon.
The Orchid-Star are as at home in a club environment as on a festival stage and have played at the Synergy Project, Planet Angel, Acid Monkey, and Edensounds amongst others.
2006 saw the band concentrate mostly finishing off their first album "Birth" - in Pete's opinion the best thing he has ever produced – a collection of tracks originally written for sets for Planet Angel, ID Spiral, Bingly Bongly and Liquid Connective
While people who have seen the Orchid-Star live will be familiar with most of the tunes on "Birth" they may be surprised to find that, whilst this is still a very rhythmic, big, lush sounding album, it is predominantly down-tempo. This is a legacy of the chill-out roots of this project - the second album, already half-written, promises to a much more up-tempo affair.
2007 has seen Orchid-Star back out live more including performances at Sunrise, Antiworld, Glade, Bowl and Waveform festivals, and clubs like Planet Angel and Synergy with sets ranging from their first full-on dance set to some special performances of 'Birth' in it's entirety
The band saw 2008 in in style with 2 gigs in the first 12 hours and on 1st Feb their debut album 'Birth' was released on Liquid Sound including a 2nd CD, 'reBirth', with remixes by Youth, Tripswitch, Kuba, Subsonar and Pete.
The summer included performances at the following festivals, Glastonbury, Glade, Hadra (France), Offworld, Boom (Portugal) and Solfest though a prime-time main-stage slot at Sunrise was sadly lost to freak weather.
Their first (7-mix) single 'Passion' will be release digitally by Archangel Recordings on Oct.27th '08. Pre-order now from www.archangeluk.co.uk/orchidstar
Watch the video for Passion below
