MOTHER GONG

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to process this album with a music program that separates the instrumental and vocal parts. Then what will remain is wonderful music in the new age style with a flavor of jazz, fusion, sometimes with excursions into psychedelia, sometimes into word music. And the voice can be listened to separately as an audiobook, if someone is interested in delving into the trance esoteric revelations of Gilli Smyth.

Why am I so strict? Because it seems to me that this album is hopelessly spoiled by singing. Although it is difficult to call Mrs. Smith's endless melancholic recitatives singing. I don't know, maybe I am not on the same wavelength with her, because I do not take substances that expand consciousness or am not so abstracted from reality. Or maybe I do not understand the meaning of her messages, which, it seems, only she understands. But I do not like this approach to music. Her voice seems out of place. I had to scroll each track with her voice further and further forward. I usually do not do that.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this album one star is the wonderful instrumentals where Mrs. Smith doesn't say anything. Unfortunately, there are only three of them, and they are short. This is the gentle, airy Sea Horse with a smooth saxophone line and otherworldly chants. This is also Waipu with a pleasant guitar and naturalistic sounds of nature in the style of Deep Forest and Enigma. These groups and similar music were very popular at the time. The Spirit Of The Bush is in the same style, the only thing missing is the singing of the aborigines. Very unexpected music for the Gong Universe, I didn't expect to find it here. Perhaps something good can be said about the other compositions, but only after removing the narration of the text. In a completely instrumental form, this album could have received 4 stars. But as it is, only 2, unfortunately.

The matriarchal branch on the Gong family tree, MOTHER GONG may have been just one of a multitude of Gong side projects that emerged from Daevid Allen's fertile musical playing grounds but clearly must stand out as one of the strangest of the lot. Led by progressive rock's only space whisper extraordinaire Gillian Mary "Gilli" Smyth whose sensual siren-like cosmic callings haunted the classic Gong years as she elevated the Canterbury jazz infused space rock to cosmic realities. Her presence was the perfect antidote to Daevid Allen's quirky whimsical approach and delivered the perfect divine feminine touch on an otherwise male-dominated scene.

The idea for MOTHER GONG was in the works as far back as 1974 when Smyth left the parent grouping but officially took form in 1978 after the release of Smyth's solo album "Mother" which gathered her political ideologies and poetic inclinations. The next step was yet another offshoot in the Gong universe called MOTHER GONG where this time Gilli steered the ship and took things into arenas never envisaged by Allen and his cohorts. The debut album FAIRY TALES arrived on the scene and found the unlikely pairing of symphonic prog, Canterbury jazz, folk music, Gong inspired space rock and children's FAIRY TALES of all things~! An oddball mix to be sure, FAIRY TALES featured three tales that were subdivided into seven or eight parts.

While most narrated in spoken word prose by Smyth, the backing music features an all-star lineup including Gong saxist Didier Malherbe, Hawkwind woodwind player Nick Turner and a host of other musicians offering various sounds including rock guitar, keyboards, bass guitar, percussion and ethnic touches such as the harp, muzma and Uilleann pipes. Broken up into three major tales: "Wassillissa," "The Three Tongues" and "The Pied Piper," the album features Smyth in story time hour with her own soundtrack of seasoned musicians wailing away in the background. A bizarre mishmash of styles that weave in and out of the background with varying effects while Smyth stoically reads to the audience as if we were in a grade school class.

Despite the oddball combo pack of prog rock and folk mixed with children's FAIRY TALES, Smyth found some interest in the weirdness of it all and toured with artists such as Bob Dylan and Big Brother and the Holding Company as well as recording audio books for children! Perhaps the most out of the box thinking performer in the entire history of progressive rock, Smyth continued the band with various lineups pretty much until her death in 2016 in one form or the other. This music is really hard to categorize as it sounds like nothing else. The music is more like a collage effect sounding more like the whacky spastic tendencies of Frank Zappa than anything in the Canterbury umbrella however there's that too!

Well, it's a novel idea for sure but one i'm not overly excited about as i tend to dislike spoken word poetry accompanied by music with a few exceptions such as Current 93's unique approach. Children's tales offer bizarre subject matter for a prog album but i guess everything should be tried at least once however the music doesn't seem to jive well with the storyline and the monotonous diction of Smyth seems to diminish the overall effect. I wish she would have offered some of these recitals in her classic space whisper mode or at least offered some more musical singing styles to break up the rather uniform presentation at hand. It's an OK album and one that deserves kudos for its brash experimental approach but like many excursions into the unknown doesn't necessarily work out as much as i had hoped. Personally i prefer the following "Robot Woman" to this one.

Spoken fairy tales with musical accompaniment: Isn't this the perfect match for progressive rock artists? I think so! The music created to support Gilli's accomplished and very professional rendering of three fairy tales is the best Gong music I've ever heard! The recording and engineering is almost perfect, with only a few issues between the voice track levels and those of the instruments, otherwise this is just a delightful album of melodies, musicianship, and creativity, with the bonus that it's all in support of these wonderful, meaningful stories.

1. "Wassalisa" (22:28) is musically my favorite thing Gong (in any of its incarnations and offsprings) has ever done. It's just mesmerizing! While Gilli's story is wonderful and theatric, there are times when the vocal track is mixed too low (or Gilli's voice modulates into lower volumes) so that her story gets lost in the music. This is acceptable mostly because the music is SO amazing, so engaging. In my third listen through I'm still having a terrible time trying to focus on the story because I am so in love with the music. It's like listening to Anthony Phillips' "Geese and the Ghost" for the first time (only with better sound production). Didier Malherbe is wonderful, but then so are the rest of the musicians. Great art! (9.5/10)

2. "The Three Tongues" (12:43) is a nice story with a good moral that is much better mixed with its musical accompaniment. The music here draws quite a bit from classical traditions with many sections featuring single instruments carrying the melody or weight of the theatric support--classical guitar, piano, steel-stringed guitars, oboe, Uilleann pipes, harp, keyboards, and, of course, plenty of woodwinds. The theatric incidentals used for sound effects and accents (including crowd noises) are amazing and add a great deal to the rendering. (10/10)

3. "The Pied Piper" (14:38) is sonically the most well-balanced song as well as the most confidently rendered story from the storyteller. The GENTLE GIANT/GRYPHON/circus-like music is my least favorite, least engaging, but is perfectly performed and makes the best theatric companion to Gilli's story. (Could they be partially improvised?) How much fun these professionals must have had making this album! (9.5/10)

Whether this music and album were created as a vehicle for children stories or Wagnerian-like operas, this is brilliant, masterful music; an album to hear, to fall in love with.

Mother Gong - Gilli Smyth's own branch of the extended Gong family - started off humbly, offering up this triptych of fairy tales narrated by Gilli as a range of Gong and Hawkwind alumni jam away in the background in a broadly thematically and tonally appropriately manner. It's decent enough for what it is, though what it is is a collection of children's stories set to psychedelic music, and in some respects the formula trips itself up - the music distracts from the stories and at points overwhelms Gilli's narration, whilst Gilli's narration often obscures some of the more interesting things the band are doing.

Daevid Allen guests on this album, but as with all Mother Gong releases it's very much Gilli Smyth's show. The inclusion of Catapilla saxophonist Robert Calvert (not to be confused with the poet, solo artist and occasional Hawkwind vocalist!) enables Smyth to explore a different avenue of jazz-influenced Canterbury than the fusion-oriented Pierre Morelen's Gong; Mother Gong's music here is more based around spacey free jazz and gentle, organic atmospheres. It's undoubtedly a good album, but the particular musical vision it's chasing isn't quite my cup of tea, and the material isn't quite strong enough to overcome that. A worthwhile piece chasing up if you liked the dreamy space whisper segments from classic Gong albums and think an entire album along the same vein would be an awesome idea.

I am not entirely sure about the whole Gong history here. But as far as I understand it, Gong went with Moerlin's jazz and the original Gong weirdo sound became homeless. Well, until Gilli Smyth established Mother Gong, that is.

On this album at least, you will find a lot of Gong's weirdness from the Teapot Trilogy era. The jazz is still there, but in a much more pastoral elegant form. This has a lot to do with Robert Calvert (Catapilla) and his saxophone. He gets a lot of space on this album. He and Gilli Smyth's vocals. Her lyrics is spaced out to say at least. Some of the lyrics is also very serious. The song Hands is a prime example. Daevid Allen's guest contribution to this album is a bit wild though. But this album most of all about Gilli Smyth and Robert Calvert. In particular Gilli Smyth is really defining this album. She is also the mother gong so no wonder.

I am surprising myself when I admit I really likes this album. Mother Gong is not a bad constellation and Gilli Smyth really gets everything together here and comes up with an ace. Well, close enough that is. The songs here are really great and should appeal to all Gong and Canterbury scene fans. There are some stunning great spaced out jazz here. Mostly on saxophone. Thank you, Robert Calvert !

In short, this is a great album well worth checking out and one of the better albums Gong almost released.

4 stars

For those unfamiliar with the GonG story, during the late 70's, Daevid Allen and his partner Gilli Smyth parted company for some time, Allen following his muse in various Gong-related projects, and Gilli releasing a solo album (Mother) and shortly after assembling the band MOTHER GONG with her new partner Harry Williamson. After a most wonderful album which fused some well arranged Space-Rock with child-like stories narrated by Gilli (Fairy-Tales), the 'Robot Woman' trilogy followed. The trilogy was a lot of fun, though marred with much of what we all dislike within music of the early-to-mid 80's. 'Wild Child' was recorded during 1989, and received a vinyl release on Dave Anderson's 'Demi Monde' label. The LP features 7, mainly 6-8 minute cuts, as opposed to the 10 tracks which appeared on the CD. The overall production is a lot smoother and cleaner, the band well-honed players, including Robert Calvert providing some excellent sax work (not the famous Hawkwind member, but the less famous guy from the great CATAPILLA), Rob George on drums, Conrad Henderson on basses as well as Harry (gtrs/keys) and Gilli on voices and space-whisper. She can't really sing, but rather 'speaks' her texts, and that is possibly an acquired taste for many. Her space whispers are never an issue. Compositionally, we're not far away from what made up Robot Woman 2 and 3, the notable difference here is that the music veers toward a more jazz-prog form with some psychedelic twists and quirky turns, and without some of the New-Wavey elements which infected those earlier albums. No one track stands out over the other so it's a fairly consistent listen, but nothing overly wild or spectacular which really reaches out and shakes you. A very good album - 3.5 stars !!

This album is unlike anything i've ever heard before in my life. Gilli Smyth from GONG and Harry Williamson have created something very special here.Three Fairy Tales are told with samples, affects and most importantly with some incredible music. Nik Turner (HAWKWIND) plays aboe, Didier Mahlerbe (GONG) adds woodwinds and reeds, Eduardo Niebla (ATILA) guitar plus there are many other guests. It's difficult to describe what's going on here because I won't do it justice. Gilli is simply perfect as the narrator for these three stories. And while I pretend to be an adult I am completely taken in by these stories. Who doesn't love hearing a good story right ? And as I mentioned the music is fantastic as we get guitars, drums, uilleann pipes, woodwinds, bass, harp and keyboards. Everything is done so extremely well i'm a little bit at a loss to know what to say here. I just wish I had this when my kids were younger, but you know what I still think they'd like this.

This is a one of kind album in my collection that is done perfectly.

My first ever exposure to this Gong side project and not a meeting that inspires me.

I fully subscribe to the avant-garde and space rock ethos, minus the drugs part. But there are also some less good albums in both genres. Gili Smyth's band Mother Gong is missing the boat with this album which feels more like a piece of performance art than an album.

The mocking opening part is OK and the album then goes into a very attractive jazzy mode. Then we get some Australian didiroo or whatever that long piece of ancient aboriginal blowing instrument is called. It is one tone instrument and a good instrument. But some minutes of this becomes rather dull. Then we get some texts and poetry by Gili Smythe over some dissonant jazz and so this album continues to the end.

Put this on a stage and this will be just fine. But the lack of quality of this material really reveals itself in the album format. Frankly; this album is dull and featureless. It is also irritating taking into the account the purchase price. I am sure getting stoned would distort the qualities of this album and the stars would come flying. But as a cold sober reviewer; no stars for you........ sort of.

2 stars

I really love Gong Egg's Trilogy - for their psychedelic craziness, few later PM Gong albums as excellent jazz fusion works. Numerous side-projects starting from late 70-s are of very different quality, from great to almost unlistenable.

Mother Gong is original Gong's singer Gilli Smyth side-project, based on participation of multi-instrumentalist Harry Williamson and some Gong family members. On "The Owl And The Tree" two more great artists participates - Daevid Allen and Catapilla's sax player Robert Calvert .

What we have here is excellent Gilli Smyth-led project - aerial, spacey music with touch of Canterbury, plenty of excellent jazzy sax soloing and psychedelic atmosphere. If you liked Gilli's moments on Egg Trilogy, but didn't had her participation enough, just take this album! Excellent concentrated Gilli's spoken/singing poetry, fantastic atmosphere, and less Allen's craziness. Fantastic light'n'bright poetic work, full of sax in air.

The only problem with this album for me is David Allen's two songs somewhere in the middle. Not like he sings badly, but his two compositions are out of place and destroy common album's atmosphere. Without these two songs, the album could be almost excellent. But Daevid's 14 minutes-long "I Am My Own Lover" ( the song that could be nicely placed on some Allen's solo album) just break that light and mystic atmosphere by it's regular craziness.

So - one of really great post original-Gong album, very recommended, especially to fans of Gilli's voice and spacey mystics.