CHILLUM (*)

Chillum aka Second Hand: Like Second Hand's "Death May Be Your Santa Claus" this equally bizarre album is also a psychedelic stoner freak out. Yet aside from sharing this general profile and the fact that both Ken Elliott and Kieran O'Connor from Second Hand are here, this record bears little resemblance to "Death May be Your Santa Claus."

If someone played this for me and said it was another late 60s album by Arzachel with guitarist Steve Hillage and keyboardist Dave Stewart from Egg, I wouldn't doubt it for a moment because that's exactly what it sounds like: total stoner jamming. Now that it has been revealed that Death May Be Your Santa Claus was actually a film soundtrack (which explains its contained madness and cinematic structure), it can be reasonably assumed that O'Connor and Elliott must have been under obligation to Mushroom Records to produce another record.

This, combined with the direct drug reference of the band's name (a "chillum" is a pipe used for smoking dope) and the fact that that these two figureheads of Second Hand had a big falling out with each other around this time, would suggest that this may have been one of those "lets just jam and record it" albums to satisfy contractual demands since it has all of the hallmarks of such a record. Not that it's bad because it isn't.... if you like psychedelic jam band excursions played by guys who are obviously tripping.

There's lots of good mind-bending keyboard work, especially Dave Stewart-esque organ from Ken Elliott. It really is hard to listen to this and not believe its Dave Stewart with the pre-Egg Arzachel from the late 60s. It's a strange follow-up to the ambitious and unpredictable Death May be Your Santa Claus album, and begs the question of exactly what Elliott and O'Connor were really all about.

There's virtually so structure here, just blowing. If you know the freak-out extravaganza "Metempsychosis" from the Arzachel album you get the idea, except that Ken Elliott plays more and better organ than Dave Stewart did at that time, with the same edgy tone that Stewart used.

Just don't expect Second Hand or Seventh Wave.