FISH RISING

When I saw Hillage in the database, I immediately recognized him as a guitarist from Gong, and he was present on You, and album I thoroughly enjoyed. Fish Rising plays out like a Gong album, except instead of Pothead Pixies and Octave Doctors and all that druggy nonsense, we have lyrics about fish- cool animals, as good as any to concern your lyrics with.

Solar Musick Suite is a very good "epic" type song- 17 minutes of excellent performances, and it carries a certain cosmic, trippy feeling- exactly the kind Hillage makes on You. The softer, vocal parts sound great, and Hillage does very good vocals in addition to his guitar playing- and speaking of guitar, Solar Musick Suite eventually develops one of the great space climaxes that make Fish Rising such a cool album- beginning with an ominous guitar part, and then continuing to rise with Hillage doing some crazy soloing over the always great rhythm section, and then slipping back into the peaceful drifting feel of the song's beginning. Fish is a short, interlude-type piece, not too different from songs like Gong's Perfect Mystery, at least in format- Fish is mostly playful instrumentation with crazy vocals on top. After that comes Meditation of the Snake, a... well, meditative pile of spiraling guitars- this is a song that can take the mind to weird and wonderful places, but it wouldn't work as a long song- and it doesn't, staying under 4 minutes. On vinyl side two comes Salmon Song- not much to say here that hasn't been said- weird and wonderful as always. The best track of the album is the last, Aftaglid. Starting with a playful mix of percussion and guitars, it turns into a brain-frying monster of a song, very trippy and very cosmic- and it ends with a bang. So overall, Fish Rising is a very consistent, solid album- all five songs are strong pieces that should be heard by any fan of Gong and the Canterbury Scene. Four well-deserved stars.