UNENDING ASCENDING

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.