GONG

It's hard to believe that Daevid Allen would ever leave his Earthly domain and join the great pixie tribe in the sky but on 13 March 2015, he took the radio gnome transport to that other realm that teased him throughout his amazingly productive and creative artistic lifetime. With his blessing, the newest rendition of GONG was immediately sort forth into action following Allen's last gasp of whimsy on the ultimate farewell party carried out on the 2014 album "I See You." Yes the GONG family will continue for time immemorial and amazingly beginning with the 2016 first post-Allen GONG album "Rejoice! I'm Dead," the newest chapter of the GONG universe has remained intact for three albums in a row. UNENDING ASCENDING is the third installment in the newest rendition of GONG which retains the lineup of Ian East (saxophones, woodwinds), Fabio Golfetti (guitar, vocals), Cheb Nettles (drums, vocals), Dave Sturt (bass, vocals) and Kavus Torabi (guitar, vocals).

Long abandoning any traces of the classic Canterbury sounds of yore and sorely missing the unpredictable zaniness and whimsy of GONG's founder, the new GONG has fallen firmly into the camp of psychedelic space rock and in the span of eight tracks, UNENDING ASCENDING tackles the concept of a pan-galactic suite and draws upon the most tripped out spaciness of the former GONG playbook only under the guise of a carefully crafted reincarnation of the band's past glory. Granted this is GONG in name only and an entirely different beast that rightfully should have found a secondary appellation attached however moniker quibbles aside, the new GONG handpicked by Allen himself does a decent job in crafting its own brand of unique space rock that throws enough nods to Allen's roots while remaining steadfastly looking towards innovating the band into a distinct musical force in its own right.

This modern version of GONG showcases a wide variety of sounds ranging from the punchy instantly lovable hooks of the opening "Tiny Galaxies" to the more cosmic excursions that immediately follow with "My Guitar Is A Spaceship," "Ship Of Ishtar" and "O, Arcturus," however a conscious effort seems to be a mandatory ingredient for the new GONG as if the members are always on alert to pay tribute to its now ascended mentor as if Allen is constantly peeking through the veil and supervising the entire affair. This seems most pronounced on "All Clock's Reset" with an almost forced obligatory bouncy groove and jazzy sax / woodwind section that harkens back to some of the moments on "The Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy." But these moments are fleeting if not a tad awkward as the band has no problem moving on with heavier doses of guitar rock as heard in the riff-heavy "Choose Your Goodess" which takes on a funky bass groove accompanied by a guitar glissando backing and propensity for abstract mystical lyrical deliveries.

The album does work on many fronts. The tracks are diverse, the musicians are talented and the passion to keep the GONG experiment alive is evident. The diversity of the dynamics, tempos, musical styles and balance between innovating the future while offering homage to the past is also presented in a respectable manner. In many ways the album feels more like a Steve Hillage solo album than anything from the GONG playbook and the band does succeed in crafting a stylistic approach that is all its own. As far as a psychedelic rock album with progressive elements woven in throughout, UNENDING ASCENDING is quite fluid and well-rounded in its approach and offers a mix of elements more out of the Pink Floyd, Ozric Tentacles or Hillage heritage than GONG itself, however the one big problem i have with the NEW version of GONG is that without a charismatic singer / frontman the album sounds deflated a few notches and therefore doesn't resonate as highly on my radar as i would hope. While Allen is sorely missed a more dynamic frontman would serve this new version of GONG substantially. Overall this is a not a bad album but ultimately it falls short of something that really beckons for a return visit. Pleasant but not quite up to speed.

One of those projects that proves Daevid Allen was nothing more than an interdimensional pixie floating around like a butterfly and sampling all the fertile musical nectars wherever they may reside. After leaving GONG to Pierre Moerlen after the Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy, Allen was all over the world collaborating and cross-pollinating with like-minded freethinkers far and wide. By the late 70s, the extended GONG family had blossomed into a diverse family of related band's all held together by the familiar GONG moniker inserted into their namesakes. One of the many projects that Allen himself was involved in was this bizarre little one-off project called NEW YORK GONG which these days is more often referred to as the origins of Bill Laswell's involvement in the mutant disco band Material as well as the launching off point for his involvement with the more skronky post-Henry Cow project Massacre.

Around 1978 Allen found himself in The Big Apple, a time when not only funk, disco and dance music were all the rage but also an uglier underground such as no wave, hardcore punk as well as their friendlier cousin new wave. Initially starting out as the Zu Band and created in 1978 by producer Giorgio Gomelsky who moved to New York in the hopes of promoting progressive rock bands, the changing musical tides dictated otherwise. The band included bassist Bill Laswell, guitarist Cliff Cultreri, keyboardist Michael Beinhorn and drummer Fred Maher but spontaneously and suddenly at an October 1978 performance at the Zu Club, lead singer David Allen adopted the band name NEW YORK GONG and it pretty much stuck after that point.

As NEW YORK GONG only one studio album resulted, the 1979 release ABOUT TIME which offered a very strange mix of GONG inspired psychedelia mixed with punk rock, new wave and mutant disco. The project also proved that Allen wasn't the kind of artist who could adapt to a band situation very well as his idiosyncratic personality guaranteed it sounded like an Allen project but nevertheless ABOUT TIME showcased a rather unique chapter in the greater GONG universe. The album of nine tracks at nearly 37 minutes found Allen writing the majority of the tracks but also found a few collaborative efforts from other band members. Starting with the psychedelic intro "Preface" where Allen welcomes all aliens, humanoids and other freaks of nature, the album jumps into an accessible form of punk rock with "Much Too Old" but finds Allen delivering his unique psychedelic rapping style that was prevalent in his early GONG days. "Black September" sounding more punk in nature actually finds Allen singing but he proved to be no Joe Strummer, Johnny Rotten or Jello Biafra.

The album's inconsistent nature is one of its charms as well as a hinderance at least for any points in trying to be a New York punker! "Materialism" jumps into a mutant disco style that's both danceable and psychedelic with some nice progressive moves as far as changing up the musical motifs and completely instrumental with some jittery guitar riffs. "Strong Woman" drifts into a more 70s hippie vibe with Allen's classic glissando guitar antics accompanied by tribal drumming and that sort of Talking Heads inspired sound that King Crimson was experimenting with in the 1980s. Allen's contemplative singing also finds him in outbursts of what sound like shamanic chanting trying to break into some sort of throat singing! The short "I Am Freud" breaks into unadulterated new wave synth-pop only with brief moments of sax squawks inserted into micro-breaks.

"O My Photograph" at over 9 minutes long is the strangest track on board as it showcases Allen as the hippie punk rocker with a punk bass groove accompanied by Allen's psychedelic guitar and his greatest poetic prose turned into as many ways as expressing it as possible. The longevity of the song allows the mutant disco bass groove on high energy throughout its entirely to allow many psychedelic moments with Allen and is surprisingly danceable all the while as trippy as anything Allen conjured up in GONG! The closest thing to an actually GONG song of yore was the early 70s sounding "Jungle Window" which wouldn't have sounded out of place on 1973's "Flying Teapot" as it sounds like one of those classic moments where Allen raps about multi-dimensional creatures backed by Laswell channeling those classic Gong bass grooves along with funk guitar and a feisty tenor sax cameo provided by Gary Windo. "Hour's Gone" finishes the album starting off with a strange guitar style and then sounding like an electrified Bob Dylan before bursting into a punk rock song!

While touted as a Daevid Allen punk album, this sole offering from NEW YORK GONG is really a smorgasbord of various ideas with punk as one of the ingredients. I'm sure it became obvious to the other members that this quickly became the Daevid Allen show and that his collaborative efforts always found his dominate persona and stylistic approach steering everyone into that that psychedelic mindset. Once Allen departed the rest of the band would continue as the dance-punk / mutant disco band Material but for a brief moment NEW YORK GONG offered a wild ride through the lens of Daevid Allen interpreting the world of punk rock and new wave. The album is actually quite fun if you don't take it too seriously. No this is not an essential piece of the greater GONG universe but it certainly is one that sounds like no other and given all the styles juxtaposed together in strange new ways it's actually must've sounded a bit refreshing for anyone dissatisfied with any formulaic approach of the era. Definitely worthy of a spin now and again as it showcases Allen in both fully psychedelic hippie mode only with a bit of attitude thrown in for good measure.

'Unending Ascending' is a new and one of the countless Gong albums - the third post-Daevid Allen record released by the mythological psychedelic rock band formed in Paris back in the late 1960s. The current incarnation of the pothead pixies' crew is led by Persian guitar player and singer Kavus Torabi, who alongside his great bandmates makes sure to carry the spark of one of the most beloved old bands. Now, all three albums post-Daevid Allen so far have been recorded and performed by the same lineup of musicians and both the 2016 and the 2019 Gong releases have been sounding naturally very similar. 'Unending Ascending' is no exception, in fact, it is like a continuation of the former, as the band engage in the same psychedelic exercise, expanding but not necessarily evolving the sound of Gong, to be honest.

Nevertheless, all necessary Gong elements are here - the blissful gliss riffs, the psych-prog meanderings and the occasionally goofy and catchy lyrics, and much like the latest Yes album, 'Unening Ascending' is more of a celebration of what Gong is all about, rather than an attempt to showcase how much their sounds has progressed or expanded. Some great moments on here (which would include 'My Guitar Is a Spaceship', 'All Clocks Reset' and 'Choose Your Goddess') and some more derivative ones, as the band recaptures some sounds they had already presented on the last couple of albums by this lineup. Still, this is a fun listen but not necessarily an excellent highlight of their expansive discography.

This is the fourth album issued by the current incarnation of Gong - a line-up hand-picked by Daevid Allen to keep the band's legacy going into the future - and it's the third they put out without significant involvement from Allen himself, who died after contributing to I See You. With Rejoice! I'm Dead! and The Universe Also Collapses, Sturt, Torabi and the gang proved themselves an interesting musical prospect in their own right, working in a style combining the modern approach of the members' other musical projects with the ethos of classic-era Gong.

They lack the distinctive sense of humour Daevid Allen brought to proceedings, but frankly that's for the best - the last thing they should be trying to do is imitate Allen's inimitable persona, which was the main thing which sold the jokier side of classic Gong anyway. Instead, they're offering a trip through the spacier side of the Canterbury, or perhaps the jazzier side of space rock - in this part of the musical map, the boundaries get fuzzy.

If The Universe Also Collapses was their take on the approach of You, erring as it did towards longer compositions, this takes a different approach, focusing more on shorter songs which are nonetheless part of a song cycle. It's a terse release at less than 40 minutes, but that just suggests they're applying sensible levels of quality control rather than jamming endlessly, and certainly I found the whole thing enjoyable. It's not as eye-opening as the band's classics, nor is it as ambitious as The Universe Also Collapses, but it certainly suggests that the creative spark is still flickering away at the heart of Gong.

This is the first live album to be put out by the Gong lineup responsible for albums like Rejoice! I'm Dead! and The Universe Also Collapses - albums which emerged after the death of Daevid Allen, and saw Torabi, Sturt, and the gang take up the mantle from the previous generation and carry it into the future. As one might expect, there's a lot of emphasis on material from those albums - all but one song from The Universe Also Collapses is performed here - and the deepest dive we take into the band's back catalogue consists of an improv-heavy take on You Can't Kill Me (a song which becomes more menacing than humourous in the new group's hands, but which thematically could handle that) and a spin of Master Builder from You. 1974's You was the Gong album which, in its exploration of spacey, jazzy Canterbury soundscapes comes closest to what the current incarnation of Gong is going for, so picking Master Builder - one of the choicest cuts from it -t o perform was an excellent call.

Kavus Torabi and pals had been assembled by Daevid Allen on I See You to form the nucleus of a new Gong line-up which could carry the band's legacy into a new era following Allen's demise - something which duly occurred after the completion of that album. Allen's ghost haunted the subsequent album - Rejoice! I'm Dead! - with some vocals and lyrics from him making their way on there, but on The Universe Also Collapses he has been exorcised more or less entirely.

As on the preceding album, the group make no attempt to mimic Allen's distinctive sense of humour, perhaps wisely - that was sufficiently personal to Allen that attempts to copy it would fall flat. That said, attempts to do "Gong without Daevid Allen" are by no means new - it happened on Shamal, it happened in numerous spin-off projects using the name, and on Rejoice! I'm Dead! it happened once more.

Torabi and Sturt still, however, need to do something which is distinctly Gong-like with the project, even if the humour and the Pothead Pixies mythology is set aside, but I think they absolutely succeed here. If you had to answer the question "What is Gong?" without making reference to Allen's persona, humour, and mythology, you could say "They're the most enduringly psychedelic and spacey of the original wave of Canterbury bands" and I think most Gong fans would agree with that. After all, isn't one of their most celebrated albums You, in which the Allen-inspired humour drifts away in favour of intense instrumental workouts?

That's pretty much what you get here - jazzy, psychedelic, spacey Canterbury, using modern instrumentation and textures to produce a 21st Century equivalent of, say, the longer tracks on You. If you're into that side of Gong, you'll find a lot to like here, and I suspect that goes for most Gong fans - I know more people who tolerate the Allen whimsy for the sake of the space-Canterbury workouts than I do people who sit through the latter wishing the band would get back to the teapot jokes.

In his final years, Daevid Allen sought to secure the future of Gong by putting together a new lineup, primarily focusing on younger musicians who could carry the torch into the future. I See You saw this new grouping given a test run, with Allen still very much unboard; this album, finds the lineup of Dave Sturt, Kavus Torabi, Fabio Golfetti, Ian East, and Cheb Nettles face the truly major test which is "Can we make something authentically Gong-like away from Daevid's supervision?"

The answer is an emphatic "yes". Allen is not wholly absent here - some vocals are used on Beatrix, some lyrics of his make it in - but these contributions are thin scraps, Allen passing through as a ghost at the gig rather than being a full participant in the album's creation. The end result is very much the product of the current lineup.

The obvious question is "Does the classic Gong sense of humour survive?" and the answer is "Not really, but that might be for the best." The fact of the matter is that the humourous side of Gong was very much an expression of Allen's personality; in pretty much every Gong lineup and off-shoot that hasn't involved Allen, it's not been present. That isn't to say that all such projects are po-faced and humourless - Steve Hillage's solo work certainly has its lighter moments - but it is the case that Daevid was such a unique and characterful presence in any of the Gong incarnations he was involved in that once he's gone, it just ain't the same.

That being the case, a forced attempt to mimic Allen's comic-mystic persona would be doomed to failure - it would be wrong for Sturt and company to try and do that, just as it would have been wrong for Gong in the 1970s to do it when they were making Shamal, the first Dave-less Gong effort. Instead of trying to do a limp impersonation of Allen's humour, the current Gong concentrate on being worthy successors to the Gong musical heritage - and that means jazzy, psychedelic Canterbury prog, cut through with some of the more modern post-punk influences also found in Torabi's other projects such as Guapo or Cardiacs. (This, too, is appropriate - what were Planet Gong or New York Gong if not Allen's bid to embrace a somewhat more punkish/new wave ethos back in the day?)

If you're the sort of Gong listener who politely sat through Daevid's whimsy for the sake of getting to the proggy musical workouts, you'll probably love this; if you're the sort of Gong listener for whom without Daevid's humour the band has nothing to offer you, you probably won't like this, though you were probably expecting that what with him being too dead to take a full part in the recording process. If you're the sort of listener who digs both sides of Gong's music, you'll probably realise that things have shifted here - but you probably also have broad enough tastes to realise why that's a good thing.

The climactic performance at the 2006 Gong Family Unconventional Gathering - following on from various performances from solo projects and bands in the wider Gong universe - found a range of Gong veterans taking to the stage for a triumphal trip through the hits. The focus is very much on the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy and Camembert Electrique, which most would say constitute the best material of the band's first era, prior to Daevid Allen's first departure.

This is, to be honest, exactly what you want out of a reunion exercise like this - let later lineups and other projects in the wider galaxy go more experimental and strive for novelty. Most of the lineup here would come together again in the studio to put together 2032, which can be seen as the final chapter of "old Gong" - after that, Allen and Gilli Smyth used the I See You album to pass the torch to a much younger and more or less entirely new lineup, who have kept the spirit of the group going after Allen and Smyth's deaths. 2032, though, seems to have had a fairly tepid reception. Perhaps this is a better way to remember the early 1970s veterans of the group - together again, playing the material which won over the hearts of their fanbase, and at peace with each other after the ups and downs of prior years.

Review #96!

I have never liked Gong. I have never liked 'You'. But something went off in my brain while giving this album another listen that made me finally like it. This is the third installment in a trilogy of concept albums Gong has put out entitled 'Radio Gnome Invisible'. I have never cared to follow the plot of this trilogy, and I probably never will. The album starts relatively crappy, with the dumb, ridiculously short, nonsensical 'Thoughts for Naught'. It repeats a mediocre flute melody with some dumb voices and lyrics. It is not all bad though. The music sounds good. Then is 'A.P.H.P.'s Advice', which sounds like the intro to some old Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Kind of fun, but unnecessary in this album. 'Magic Mother Invocation' is actually not a terrible instrumental, and the fact that it is under two minutes makes it more digestible. This bleeds into 'Magic Builder', where we start getting into the real songs on this album. This is very spacey and sounds like some druggy Middle- Eastern tune until some amazing trumpets come and the track explodes into this avant-garde barrage of complicated time signatures and solos. There are some lyrics here and there, but they are barely comprehensible, so I ignore them. This is honestly one of the best Canterbury Scene tracks ever. 'A Sprinkling of Clouds' starts off like someone bought a keyboard and started driving their fists rhythmically into the keys. This goes on for quite a while until the beat slightly changes and percussion enters the scene. This creates a very spacey environment and makes good use of the song title. Some other instruments are introduced and the mood becomes more interesting. This is honestly not a bad song, it is really a great one. Makes me feel glad I gave this album another listen. 'Perfect Mystery' is a nice track with great music and annoying vocals. I'm glad this album is largely instrumental, or I might have complained a lot more. On side two is 'The Isle of Everywhere'. It starts off pretty funky with some French lady sing-talking. I love this intro. So fun and groovy, I want to get up and dance. Horns walk up on the stage and you get some amazing solos. This track is so strong and impressive, it honestly makes me hate not originally liking this album. How could I overlook this masterpiece? I don't know. The last track on this album is 'You Never Blow Yr Trip Forever'. This song starts off pretty groovy and funky, like the previous song. I am reminded of Herbie Hancock's 'Hornets'. There is some weird chanting for about a minute and the melody changes. Flutes eventually start playing, and the music returns to greatness again. There is some more chanting and another change of melody, and so on and so on. I love this track, and now I am glad to say I love this album. 4.5 stars, to be honest, but to play it safe, I'll give it a four. Prog on.

It is safe to say that anyone who can state which Gong members played on what albums, and what line-ups were deemed 'official' and possibly even name all the offshoot bands would be a certifiable but paid-up member of the Gong fan club, and probably made every effort to be at The Gong Family Unconvention at the Melkweg club in Amsterdam in November 2006. This was a unique 3-day event where all the surviving original members of the band came together (drummer Pierre Moerlen had died the previous year) to form a new line-up which I am sure had never previously shared a stage. After performing sets with their own bands, they came together to play for well over 2 hours, and anyone who enjoys this band is bound to find their own favourite on this set. 15 years to the day from the performance, this was made available both in audio and DVD, and while I only have the former I do already have plenty of Gong DVDs in my collection so was just able to sit back and really savour this.

For the aficionado, the line-up that night was Daevid Allen (guitar, vocals), Gilli Smyth (vocals, space whisper), Steve Hillage (guitar), Didier Malherbe (flute, soprano sax, duduk), Theo Travis (tenor sax), Tim Blake (synthesiser, vocals), Miquette Giraudy (synthesiser), Mike Howlett (bass), Chris Taylor (drums), and together they concentrated on the classic albums 'Camembert Electrique', 'Flying Teapot', 'Angel's Egg' and 'You' with just one song from 'Zero To Infinity' and nothing else. 18 tracks, classics all, with the band combining and creating something incredible special in the way that only Gong can. We get plenty of glissando, Gilli provides her poetry, and this is far more of an event or happening than just a gig. By concentrating on the second album and then the three which form the 'Radio Gnome Invisible' trilogy the band were giving the fans exactly what they wanted, even though the most recent of the albums was already more than 30 years old (and now nearly 50), yet it is striking at just how relevant and exciting they are even today.

Gong were a very special band indeed (yes, I know they are still in existence as Daevid Allen wanted them to continue after his death), and although there have been multiple line-ups over the years, for me it is when Daevid, Gilli and Steve were all playing together that this band became something very special indeed and this live recording captures all that and so much more. If you consider yourself a proghead but have never seriously investigated Gong, then this is the place to start.