Gong
Live Etc.

THE REVIEW

I write as I collapse like dead weight to the notes of "Fur Immer" by Neu. I don't know, it surely gives me a glimpse of the greatness of the...

Gong.

That unique trance of krautrock and the naive disenchanted panism of Glastonbury's hippy culture and Fairport's folk. Allen and Hillage are another reality, another mechanism producing sounds and vibrations. In 1973-1975 they already shocked us with the "flying" trilogy and scattered live performances in France, England, and other places where they made entirely picturesque appearances.

This album offers us fifteen special signatures that highlight all the tenacity and cunning of Allen and the whole family.

The teapots and the angels' eggs are the testaments to their conception, but we should not overlook, as it would be sinful, "Camembert Electricque" and the dark "Magick Brother" and "Mystic Sister."

"You Can't Kill Me" is even more spacial, then "Zero The Hero" is beyond words... part 2 is a sudden sighting of Mars.

"Flying Teapot" feels like traveling inside a spaceship, grazing drones, star birds, sea horses. The concept they propose in the year of "change," "boredom," punk immediacy, since "Live Etc." was released in '77, is very cyborg. And obviously, without thinking for a second that the hippies had already vanished a while ago... and there were either bald heads or post-punk tufts in the clubs.

And indeed, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" is a real cry of protest, the last remnants of psychic space folk. The tribalisms and odd times never leave us with "Get Inner" and the various takes of the "space fusion" of "You."

The gypsy cabaret of "Radio Gnome Invisible" and "Flying Teapot" are the colorful yet simultaneously decadent, unstable, schizophrenic Gong idea. It's a mix of collage, irony, freak provocation, comics, graffiti...

The relationship between a clown throwing skittles to a tightrope walker and their respective idea of game/death...

Their sorceress Circe, Muse, Goddess, Witch Gilli Smyth is brilliant at unlocking our dark imagination and perverse visions of this indigenous dance to a voodoo rhythm. "Dynamite / I Am Your Animal" is all this, it's just anarchy and management of freedom, but only with one thing. The awareness of combining art and fun.

The desert, the deserted island of "The Isle Of Everywhere" is always something unique, with that very pre-Sting bass of "Zenyatta"..!

Well, anyway "Master Builder" is a flying disc that plays an eternal mantra, then if you want to escape with emergency exits, take the tunnel with "Outer / Inner Temple."