ARZACHEL

Arzachel's self-titled debut presents an early phase of two famous musicians of the Canterbury prog scene: Dave Stewart on Hammond organ and Steve Hillage on guitar. It is a rough, unpolished work clearly sounding like many psych/acid-rock records of the late 1960s.

First part of the album consists of 4 shorter tracks dominated by the heavy organ sound and certain Baroque feel, somewhere in line with contemporary experiments of THE NICE, PROCOL HARUM or what would FOCUS do in a year or two later on. Starting from the halfway through "Leg", the music evolves into a blues-based heavy rock, reflecting both the British blues champions like John Mayall or Clapton's CREAM (re-hashing of the old blues "rolling and tumbling" theme) and the emerging heavy rock of the Hammond-dominant DEEP PURPLE for instance. Two lengthy tracks present the transition from the heavy electrified blues towards the psychedelic space-jam with lots of improvisation and some really fiery guitar technique of Hillage. His guitar is still not recogniseable and sounds like any of the 1969 freaky guitar player on trip, but still it is a convincing play. The closer "Metempsychosis" is definitely over-streched psychedelic jam that does not appear as well-structured composition and can be really boring to listen to.

"Arzachel" is good effort and one of the fine examples of the acid-rock era witnessing the emergence of heavy riff-based rock music, but more important albums of these musicians would follow during the 1970s.

PERSONAL RATING: 3,5/5

P.A. RATING: 3/5