GONG EST MORT? VIVE GONG!

The core lineup of the Radio Gnome years had a reunion in Paris in 1977, the highlights of which are presented in Gong Est Mort? Vive Gong! Say what you like about the band: they certainly weren't overprotective of their name, allowing various spin-offs and factions to use it over the years - for instance, this reunion took place right when the Pierre Moerlen-led lineup hadn't yet officially changed their name to Pierre Morelen's Gong, but Moerlen, Howlett and Malherbe have no qualms about abandoning their fusion experiments in order to bring back the old pothead pixies magic.

Whilst in principle the album is pretty interesting, presenting as it does extended versions of Gong classics from Camembert Electrique to You with a lineup showing a high degree of technical polish and practice, unfortunately the recording quality of the album is really quite poor - not quite on bootleg levels, but poor enough that the finer details of the songs are obscured and the results sadly fall short of the band's usual standards. Not the lineup's fault - this would have been a great gig to watch, but sadly the tapes just aren't up to much. Oh well. One to get if you really, really can't get enough Radio Gnome trilogy material.