GONGMAISON: GONGMAISON

Gongmaison - "Gong", as in the Daevid Allen-led incarnation of the band, circa the classic Angel's Egg trilogy, and "maison" as in French for "house", as in house music. The Gongmaison project saw Allen pull together a range of musicians - including Gong stalwarts such as Didier Malherbe - for an experiment in fusing the classic Gong sound with modern-day dance music.

The connection isn't as left-field as you might think - Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy would launch a second career as System 7 a couple of years down the line when they realised the potential of taking their Rainbow Dome experiments and applying those ideas to dance music, and Allen's own The Wise Man In Your Heart sounds an awful lot like a prototype of the genre to me. Still, whilst the experiment is fascinating the album simply makes me yearn for another listen to You instead of continuing with the interminable Flying T. Dance Mix.

On the whole, worth a look for Gong fans and a nice experiment in dabbling in a genre otherwise ignored or sneered at by prog musicians, and of course the partial reunion here eventually led to further Allen-fronted Gong projects down the line. But I wouldn't put it in the upper tiers of the expanded Gong discography.

Graham Clark!

I saw Daevid Allen live in Edinburgh in a small club in the fall of 1989, on his comeback tour where he introduced Gongmaison. He began the show with just himself in a Wizard costume, playing harmonium and then acoustic guitar, with the rest of the Gongmaison members slowly joining him. At the time, there were only a few members, including Graham Clark on violin, and Shamal Maitra on tabla and percussion. The songs he played are found on this album, on the Owl and the Tree album (with Gilly Smyth and Mother Gong), and on his Australia Aquaria album (brought together nicely in the collection "Gentle Genie"). These are all great tunes, clearly written over a number of years before these shows, except "Flying Teapot" of course - at the show I saw, Gilly Smyth and Mother Gong also got up and played a set, and they all came together at the end to play Flying Teapot. But the Gongmaison songs are all high quality. Graham Clark's violin playing is particularly wonderful. Daevid rarely played with a violin in his band, but the years with Clark produced some really great music (Clark co-wrote some of the music that appeared on Shapeshifter, as well as "Blame the Rich" on Gentle Genie). This Gongmaison album is pretty short, with only six songs and a short version of Flying Teapot, and so I can only give this 7.5 out of 10 (3 PA stars). Better to pick up the Gentle Genie album, which has most of this album plus the best tunes from those other two albums - that one is really worth it.