The Daevid Allen Gong masterpiece is the Radio Gnome Invisible concept trilogy (Flying Teapot, Angels Egg and You). After the trilogy there are good moments but nothing really compares with the trilogy in my opinion. The playful creative core was Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Didier Malherbe, who had spent a lot of time hanging out and travelling together in France and Spain in the late sixties before they formed Gong - they had some great shared experiences to craft into their music.
Torabi era Gong is definitely a different beast to Allen era Gong, but there's definitely still threads of continuity that make them feel like different iterations of the same group. Not that I'd expect someone who'd only heard two Allen era songs prior to pick up on them! Much of the execution here is modern in style and, unsurprisingly, not far removed from some of Kavus other projects like Knifeworld and The Monsoon Bassoon, but to my ears at least the cheeky bassline on this track is pure Gong vibes, so on a foundational level it feels like the real deal to me. Also worth mentioning that this lineup do a spiffing job on the classic material live, so no issues there. It's Gong, Jim, but not as we know it.
Okay so I subbed :) Love the videos and in-depth analysis on the music. Now you have to do me a favor, a video on Immortal - Pure Holocaust As the eternity opens... Please :) If I remember correctly Abbath played drums and bass or guitar on the album since they really did not have a drummer at that time.
Since you seem to be checking out so much different music atm. I highly recommend Project Mishram an Indian prog metal band that uses native instrumentation in with the metal sound
Suggestions if you want to have a look at what's been going on in between: "Wingful of Eyes". Gong without Allen in 1976. "City of Self Fascination". Gong with Allen in 2009. They're both pretty distant from anything you've heard so far.
Perhaps I should have prepared your expectations better for this one 😅 The new Gong and old Gong are very different; that’s basically unavoidable if you have a 100% change in membership. But the current lineup didn’t just come out of nowhere. Members of the current lineup were working alongside Daevid Allen and other former Gong members in the previous two albums, which acted sort of as transitional albums. Point being, it’s not just some random cover band, these are people who knew Daevid personally and who he entrusted with this. I do entirely get what you’re saying though. They do lack the playfulness of the old Gong, and for that reason I don’t really rank them as highly, but I still quite like them. Then again, I quite like nearly everything Kavus Torabi has touched (Torabi being the new frontman of Gong that you heard here.) Again, I really should have done something to prepare your expectations for this. Choosing this song actually took quite a bit of thought. I knew I wanted you to listen to a newer Gong song, but I struggled to choose which one. The choice kinda made itself in the end. I didn’t want to pick from a transitional album, I wanted to give this lineup a chance to stand on their own. So far, there’s only one such album where they stand on their own, The Universe Also Collapses. And that album only has four tracks. One of them is 20ish minutes, which I thought was too long. Another one is rather short, and I felt like there wasn’t much to talk about with that one. That left me with only two options, and I was very back and forth on them. In the end, I chose this one. Would I have chosen the other one now if given the chance? Probably haha. The way you wrapped up this video is a great note to leave on. People often tend to demand conflicting things of art and artists, or hold them to unrealistic expectations. I imagine it’s a lot of pressure. This is on the other end of the spectrum from where Gong started. Perhaps that choice was intentional, a way to loudly declare that, for this band to continue on, it must do so without being shackled to the lofty expectations of the band’s past iteration. Gong evolved their style several times, all way earlier than this, and of course they’re continuing to change even fifty years later. I imagine in the 2070s, in continuing with the tradition Daevid has just started, the torch will pass down to another group of people under Kavus’s blessing. And they’ll likely do something that sounds nothing like the Gong of the 1970s or the Gong of today. And I don’t see that as a bad thing really.
Knowing that many of the members worked with Daevid and some of the original members, as well as there being transitional albums between the two styles, puts a lot of this into perspective. And you're probably right, this does feel wholly divorced from the original Gong in a way that seems intentional. I don't have the full context of the transition albums but I could see this being the point where this lineup declares a new direction for the band that primarily looks forward rather than backwards.
This composition, in it's grooved sections, borrows heavily on the Gong track 'Fohat digs holes in space'/' What do you want? ' which was featured on two early Gong albums. Other sections remind me of some early Gong material. An interesting listen nevertheless.
I'm not positive, but my ear says that's Kavus Torabi. Check him out with Guapo, Cardiacs, and his own Knifeworld. What Kayo Dot? Bryan, this is probably the most interesting reaction channel. I'm discovering stuff and do I have some suggestions.😱
This sounds good. I love Camembert Electrique but I'm not doing what I did 50 years, so why should they? I remember the thing we had about the Fall, that you'd be disappointed if you'd already heard more than half their set on records - exaggeration: but how would bad would it be if VdGG had reformed just to play the old stuff? Daevid Allen's Good Morning is a lovely album, by the way.
Yup, I addressed this at the end -- that my disappointment was all on me. The song is good and well executed I was just in the wrong mindset for it. For instance I love both a good burger and well prepared tofu equally, but tell me I'm getting a burger but then give me a tofu dish and I'll be disappointed. That's where I was with this. I'd probably enjoy the song a lot more on a second listen when I meet it on it's own terms but here I was expecting something totally different.
Gong est mort ! Three great albums is all thats left ! Allens gone , Hillage retired Malherb ? Moerlen ,gone , Blake ? .... anyway , the REAL GONG doesnt exist anymore . The band using the name for a leg up , now just cant do it . The spirit of Gong was Daevid Allen , with his mystic fueled humour & nuttiness & the class musicians that possessd the affinity to power & colour his vision . They lived together , probably philosophised & tripped together , allmost family . They were pretty much unique , one of a kind , an allmost impossible act to follow . The band thats using their name should grow a pair & sink or swim on their own merits with a different name . They ARENT Gong ! !
The jam parts are quite similar to Allen era Gong, but of course there's no one that can redo what Daevid did, because there's simply no one like him. At least Kavus Torabi honours the heritage a lot better than the Moerlen Gong did. And Daevid entrusted him with holding the torch for a reason. They should get themselves another vocalist though.
I'd love to get some more popular stuff on the channel. I had a blast checking out Barbie Girl and I wonder how many other songs are out there that I have no idea what they're about despite hearing them hundreds of times
What is a band? Is a band the same band if all the members are unaboriginal? Would King Crimson be King Crimson without Fripp? The King's Singers are always changing personnel, and yet remain the King's Singers. It may depend on how essential the lead visioneer. Soprano sax? This Gong song has a snarky puppy and/or an insouciant kitty vibe, at certain points, with pregnant maximalism folded in at tasteful intervals. If this song was anything like "Follow You, Follow Me", I would certainly lament the fall from the heights, but this is more like Snarky Prepuce, or whatever, on electric chai, which strangely close to electric chair. You've piqued my interest in hearing their full catalog.
Yeah this iteration of Gong has literally 0 members of the 70s band in here. They do try to keep the feel, but it's definitely an entirely different band. Not as big a fan of this as that gnome trilogy. Personally I think the more modern bands influenced by OG Gong do a better job (Ozric Tentacles, Hidria Spacefolk) of keeping the feel while still pushing forward.
