•
Rating:
"Eh, Mushroom, Will You Mush My Room?"
In 1971, Dashiell Hedayat is a freak poet living in a 1950s pink Chrysler abandoned in a garden when beings from deep space take possession of his body. A small vanguard from the planet Gong, under the enlightened guidance of the alien elf Bert Camembert, lands in Paris to lay the groundwork for the upcoming arrival of the Pot Head Pixies with their flying teapots. The mission is to push music beyond the boundaries of rock, and the most extraordinary weapons are the glissando guitar and the space whisper.
Dashiell, with his spaced-out visions derived from the symbiosis of mushrooms with a rather peculiar nature, is the ideal type to carry out experiments in stealth with the aim of creating the necessary bridge for future broadcasts of the station Radio Gnome Invisible. The aliens leave him the first side of the album with the suite Mushroom: the six minutes of fabulously quirky rock in "Chrysler", an electric ode dedicated to his car-home; the monotone song "Fille de l'ombre" repeated to exhaustion over the background of rushing water and Gilli's intergalactic cries; and finally the sweet ballad "Long song for Zelda" that seems to adhere to psychedelic normality criteria, with acoustic accompaniment to the poetry sung by Hedayat and the slide snaking in the background. At least until Malherbe's sax arrives, because right after Dashiell begins barking like a dog, howling his love for Zelda.
On the second side, the aliens reveal the true purpose for which they used the body of the Parisian freak. The twenty-one minutes lost in space of " Cielo Drive/17" are pure Gong masterpiece: the pulsing bass of Submarine Captain/Christian Tritsch, the obsessive percussion of Pyp Pyle, the effects of Bert Camembert/Daevid Allen's glissando guitar, the free jazz sax (and then flute) of Blumido Bad De Grass/Dieter Malherbe, the space whisper of Gilli Smyth refine the amalgam necessary for the acid mixture that in just a few minutes leads to knowledge that would otherwise require a lifetime.
Which of the two methods do you prefer?
Tracklist
Loading comments slowly
