By no means essentially the most simple of bands, by 1977 Gong was represented by two radically totally different incarnations. Certainly one of them, buying and selling as Pierre Morlen’s Gong, was deep within the realms of vocal-free jazz-rock (as exemplified by the earlier 12 months’s Gazeuse! album); in the meantime, authentic founder Daevid Allen’s nascent (and finally short-lived) Planet Gong outfit had been on a extra raucous musical path. With Allen joined by spouse and long-time musical accomplice Gilli Smyth, plus assorted members of space-rockers Right here & Now, the collective set off on a sequence of excursions. Recorded at their November 6, 1977 present in Toulouse, and launched the next 12 months on French imprint LTM (and Charly within the UK), the Reside Floating Anarchy 1977 album presents a vivid illustration of their stay dynamic.
Reside Floating Anarchy 1977 kicks off with “Psychological Overture,” a basic Gong montage of pixie voices and digital bleeps, abetted by Gilli Smyth’s legendary house whispers. It’s left to the next “Floating Anarchy” to herald within the new path, cranking up the tempo with a livid barrage of high-speed riffs topped off with political slogans and an anthemic refrain. “Stone Innocent Frankenstein” follows: a sped-up and rejuvenated remodeling of Allen’s basic Banana Moon solo album lower.
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With its ethereal shrieks and slow-paced riffs, “New Age Transformation Try: No More Sages” briefly harks again to previous musical pastures earlier than “Opium For The People” (later launched as a single) presents Planet Gong’s tackle new wave music. The epic (in each title and song-length) “Allez Ali Baba Black-Sheep Have You Any Bullshit? And/Or (Then) Mama Maya Mantram” rounds issues off with a downright unsettled menagerie of crazed chanting, astral bleeps, and heavy riffs.
With a dynamic completely suited to the occasions, but nonetheless quintessentially Gong, the band was warmly acquired by up to date audiences (in marked distinction to lots of their late 60s friends). However then, with Gilli Smyth offering a female dimension virtually extraordinary in prog, and with an anarchic component consistently at play, Daevid Allen’s Gong was by no means your common prog outfit. With Planet Gong, and Reside Floating Anarchy 1977, Allen added new wave angularity and uptempo riffs to their patented combine of folks, psych, space-rock, and jazz. Within the course of, he managed the near-impossible: promoting hippie idealism to punk rockers.
The 13-disc Love From The Planet Gong field set may be purchased right here.
