Formed while Hillage, Campbell, and Stewart were at City of London School, the band played covers of Cream, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, & The Nice. After Hillage left in mid-1968 to attend university, the remaining trio began playing original materiel written by Campbell & Stewart. Bowing to pressure of their managers, the band changed their name to Egg in early 1969. Shortly after Egg signed to Decca, a tiny company named Zackaria Enterprises gave the musicians an opportunity to record a psychedelic session for the burgeoning market. Since this was not "Egg" material (and besides, they were now under contract from Decca), Uriel re-united to produce their sole album in June of 1969, a one-off psychedelic project under the assumed name Arzachel (named after a crater on the moon, itself, named after a medieval Spanish astronomer). The musicians also used pseudonyms on the album, although their biographies contained some measure of truth.
Simon Sasparella (Steve Hillage) - guitar/vocals, Njerogi Gategaga (Mont Campbell) - bass guitar and vocals, Basil Dowling (Clive Brooks) - drums, and Sam Lee-Uff (Dave Stewart) - Organ.
The album Arzachel was recorded and mixed in a single session in London. The A-side has 4 songs, while the B-side consists of only two mind-bending psychedelic tracks, the longer of which is 17 minute long jam entitled "Metempsychosis." It was issued on the short-lived Evolution label (also home to the debut by Raw Material) and quickly became a collectors item. A pirated version is thought to have circulated in the late 1970's, and it has been heavily bootlegged in recent years. It was eventually re-released on Demon records in 1994.
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