Gong - Angel's Egg (1973)

Psychedelic adventures with Pothead Pixies, Octave Doctors and more from Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage & co.  This album by the classic Gong lineup starts with a spacey introduction, which segues into a great piece of jazz rock with some wonderful lead guitar from Hillage, and continues on in this vein for the rest of the album.

Many of the tracks are short connecting pieces which give the various band members a turn in the spotlight: more Hillage on Castle In The Clouds, Didier Malherbe on Flute Salad, Pierre Moerlen on Percolations.  Allen's "mystical histories of an undiscovered planet... for children of all ages" keep the narrative tied together among all these various interludes, and the three songs that close the album (including Hillage's I Never Glid Before) are among Gong's very best.

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pw: sgtg

Gong at SGTG:
You
Shamal
Gazeuse!
Expresso II
Daevid Allen at SGTG:
Dividedalienplaybax80
Steve Hillage at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Open/Studio Herald
Rainbow Dome Musick
Point 3: Water

Gong - Shamal (1976)

The one between You and Gaseuze! (links below), and therefore a classic transitional album.  In fact, almost all of the ingredients of what would become known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong were already in place on Shamal, recorded in late 1975.  What was previously a jazz-rock-informed psych rock band had largely shifted gear to a jazz fusion group with an emphasis on mallet percussion, and half of the tracks were instrumental.

The mellow shuffle of Wingful Of Eyes that opens Shamal was one of the vocal tracks, with Mike Howlett stepping up to the mic.  He's not a bad vocalist, but is still best off bringing that great bass sound he had to the fore, especially fuzzing it up a bit at the halfway mark.  At this point, Howlett's joined by a great guitar solo: it's one of Steve Hillage's last two appearances on a Gong album (reunions aside).  The other is on Bambooji, which closes out the album's first half after the great sax-driven track Chandra.  Highlights of the album's second half are the guest appearance from Argentinean violinist Jorge Pinchevsky, and the insistent bass groove of the closing title track.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
You
Gazeuse!
Expresso II

Gong - Expresso II (1978)

Second album by Pierre Moerlen's Gong, titled Expresso II as Gazeuse! had been released as 'Expresso' in some territories.  By this point, everyone bar the Moerlens who would've been recognisable as classic Gong - Allen, Smyth, Hillage, Howlett, Malherbe - had all jumped ship, but as far as riding out their Virgin contract was concerned, this was still Gong.  And it's a blast.

Expresso II takes the mallet-percussion jazz rock template of its predecessor and turns up the funk, resulting in the catchy strut of Heavy Tune, the jittery groove of Golden Dilemma, and so on.  Allan Holdsworth (still haven't got started on his solo records, dammit) gets in plenty more sui generis widdling, with newbie guitarist Bon Lozaga and guest Mick Taylor shining too, new bassist Hansford Rowe lays down some deft lines perfectly suited to this kind of music, and everyone has tons of fun.  I love this little record.

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pw: sgtg

Daevid Allen - Dividedalienplaybax80 (1982)

After the one-off reunion of classic Gong in 1977, Daevid Allen briefly moved to New York and formed New York Gong with the band who would go on to become Material.  The sessions for their sole LP, About Time, were subsequently plundered by Allen to create tape loops that became the basis for this nice little oddity, with new music added on top.  Allen also performed 28 solo shows in 1980, integrating the loop material into a multimedia spectacle.

Starting with a spoken introduction, album opener When develops into a minimal, post-punkish jam for eight minutes, after which eight tracks follow in quick succession at an average of barely two minutes.  Some are purely instrumental, some with just one or two vocal interjections, some fully sung.  Then there's the jerky Fastfather, probably closest to the funk-punk sound exploding all over NYC in this era, and then another lengthy jam to close.  A fascinating album in Allen's many-faceted career, this stripped-down, minimalist sound gets a definite recommendation from me.

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pw: sgtg

Various Artists - A Brief History Of Ambient, Volume 1 (1993 compilation)

First charity shop rummage of the new year turned up this double-CD mix released by Virgin Records, which as the title suggests ran to a short series.  I vaguely remember these coming out, but despite my curiosity they'd have been too heavy an investment for me at the time: this one that I've just paid two quid for still has its Tower Records price sticker of £15.49, and that's pretty reasonable for a double set of 70+ minute discs back then, IIRC!

Everything here is naturally from artists licensed to Virgin, which gives a handy reminder of what canny risk-takers Branson & co were back in the 70s through to mid-80s.  Even into the 90s to an extent - oddly, Hillage/System 7 are conspicuous by their absence for whatever reason (of course, the Point 3 albums hadn't been released yet in '93).  Just take a look at the artist list in the labels below - and I couldn't fit them all in, ran out of space.

Good track choices too (can never say no to a good chunk of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra); full tracklist is here, along with info on an early mispress that led to the mastering cues for Disc 1 being inadvertently used again for Disc 2, the latter ending up with its track divisions all over the shop.  The copy I've just bought is actually one of those - I've re-sequenced Disc 2 now.  So here's a brief history of (Virgin) ambient, with some inevitable classics, and a few (for me) new surprises: loved the remix of early Killing Joke that sounds like an update of the first two Neu! albums, to name just one.

links:
Disc 1
Disc 2
pw: sgtg


extra Phaedra...

As a postscript, for anyone who doesn't have Tangerine Dream's 1974 debut for Virgin that catapulted them to stardom with an interstellar, gaseous mix of Moog, Mellotron and flute - grab the full album below.  Was nice to see it featured in the recent Black Mirror episode, along with a faithful recreation of the WH Smith shopfronts that I remember from my childhood.

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pw: sgtg

Gong - You (1974)

One more Gong/Hillage post for the time being, in the last (studio) occasion that they'd both intertwine.  This album is the sweet spot of psychedelic Gong for me, where they got to fully flex their musical muscles on four lengthy tracks, and the remaining short pieces are the ones that carry most of Daevid Allen's comic-space-opera narrative.

After You opens with two of the latter plus a short atmospheric instrumental, Hillage is the first to get the musical spotlight with Master Builder.  I'm assuming the main riff was his, as it would appear again as The Glorious Om Riff on Green, and his guitar solos here are nothing short of blinding.  The next track, the nine mind-bending minutes of A Sprinkling Of Clouds, might prefigure Rainbow Dome Musick to begin with, but the master synther in this case is Tim Blake rather than Hillage/Giraudy.

The absolute star of You, however, IMO has to be bassist Mike Howlett.  Rock solid throughout, the generous dose of psych-jazz-funk that he lays down throughout the album reaches its apex on the ten minutes of The Isle Of Everywhere.  Laying down a hypnotic bassline that Holger Czukay might've been proud of, everyone from Blake to Hillage to the French percussion team that would shortly take ownership of the band gets a chance to shine on this album high point.

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Gong - Gazeuse! (1976)

A hugely enjoyable slab of mid-70s jazz rock, from the era of 'Pierre Moerlen's Gong', after the departure of Daevid Allen ended the ever-changing group's first psychedelic era.  Steve Hillage had departed too for his solo career by the time this album was recorded, and for this album was replaced by Allan Holdsworth.  An utterly unique guitar player and writer, Holdsworth's solo albums have been on my radar for ages but I'm never quite sure where to start - any suggestions welcome.

Holdsworth is the composer for two tracks on Gazeuse!, Night Illusion and Shadows Of, and both are great showcases for his stunning style.  The solo he unleashes about three minutes into the latter is particularly breathtaking.  The lion's share of the rest of the material is Moerlen's; as a sometime member of Les Percussions De Strasbourg, his percussive credentials formed the core of the Gong sound in this era.  The preponderance of mallet percussion on Gazeuse! makes it essential for fans of Frank Zappa's jazzier ventures, and perhaps even those of Steve Reich's percussive work.  Entirely befitting its title, this is a great little album that fizzes with effervescent energy and creativity throughout.

Alternate cover (USA, where the album was re-titled Expresso)

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