THE UNIVERSE ALSO COLLAPSES

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.