RADIO GNOME INVISIBLE VOL. 2 - ANGEL'S EGG

One has to be aware that Gong has 2 distinctive eras: the space/psychedelic progressive years and the fusion years; this album belongs to the space/psychedelic progressive era. They were really unique and they strongly inspired the progressive space rock band Ozric Tentacles. Even Steve Hillage's solo career has some elements of this Gong's style, given that he plays similar patterns on the record here.

The keyboards are not omnipresent: they mostly consist in spacy, psychedelic, echoed & high frequency VCS3 arrangements including a few bubble sounds; the miscellaneous interesting guitar effects are more prominent than the keyboards themselves. There are omnipresent sax parts that give an obvious jazzy touch to the ensemble, even flirting with the realm of the Canterbury style. There are some excellent flute parts like on the excellent track "Oily way". There are some use of around 500 ms delays, which increase the effect of the spacy elements. The style of the tracks are really varied, and they are often funny, like the fair ambience on "Ooby-scooby doomsday" and on "Givin my luv to you" or like the crazy voices on "Percolations". "Prostitute poem" contains some crazy & weird psychedelic parts, sometimes very disturbing & confusing, and the lady sings both in French & English. There are some excellent Middle Eastern voices on "Other side of the sky". Pierre Moerlen does not use very much his excellent percussions of the xylophone family: he uses them a little on "Selene" and much more on "Love is how you make it"; Moerlen rather focuses on his drums.