Gong - Angel's Egg (1973)

Psychedelic adventures with Pothead Pixies, Octave Doctors and more from Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage & co.  This album by the classic Gong lineup starts with a spacey introduction, which segues into a great piece of jazz rock with some wonderful lead guitar from Hillage, and continues on in this vein for the rest of the album.

Many of the tracks are short connecting pieces which give the various band members a turn in the spotlight: more Hillage on Castle In The Clouds, Didier Malherbe on Flute Salad, Pierre Moerlen on Percolations.  Allen's "mystical histories of an undiscovered planet... for children of all ages" keep the narrative tied together among all these various interludes, and the three songs that close the album (including Hillage's I Never Glid Before) are among Gong's very best.

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pw: sgtg

Gong at SGTG:
You
Shamal
Gazeuse!
Expresso II
Daevid Allen at SGTG:
Dividedalienplaybax80
Steve Hillage at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Open/Studio Herald
Rainbow Dome Musick
Point 3: Water

Gong - Shamal (1976)

The one between You and Gaseuze! (links below), and therefore a classic transitional album.  In fact, almost all of the ingredients of what would become known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong were already in place on Shamal, recorded in late 1975.  What was previously a jazz-rock-informed psych rock band had largely shifted gear to a jazz fusion group with an emphasis on mallet percussion, and half of the tracks were instrumental.

The mellow shuffle of Wingful Of Eyes that opens Shamal was one of the vocal tracks, with Mike Howlett stepping up to the mic.  He's not a bad vocalist, but is still best off bringing that great bass sound he had to the fore, especially fuzzing it up a bit at the halfway mark.  At this point, Howlett's joined by a great guitar solo: it's one of Steve Hillage's last two appearances on a Gong album (reunions aside).  The other is on Bambooji, which closes out the album's first half after the great sax-driven track Chandra.  Highlights of the album's second half are the guest appearance from Argentinean violinist Jorge Pinchevsky, and the insistent bass groove of the closing title track.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
You
Gazeuse!
Expresso II

Steve Hillage - Open/Studio Herald (1990 compi from 1979 LPs)

Steve Hillage had a particularly productive year to close out the 70s - a double-live album, his first ambient album Rainbow Dome Musick (see list below), and then Open - another funk-psych-prog-electronic record in the vein of Motivation Radio and Green.  That live double, Live Herald, actually ended with a studio side, and when Open came out on CD in 1990 the four 'Studio Herald' tracks were added at the beginning of the disc.  Hillage also re-shuffled the running order of the Open tracks, and added a single-only cover of Getting Better from Sgt Pepper's.  This has all since become canon on subsequent reissues, so might as well go with it.

Studio Herald, then, is likely to have been a further overspill from the two albums' worth of material that made up Radio & Green - it's in a similar ballpark, with the nine-minute New Age Synthesis (Unzipping The Zype) particularly good.  Elsewhere, Hillage attempts to go punk on 1988 Aktivator and just comes off a bit Hawkwind, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - overall, Studio Herald is a decent EP overture.  So how about Open?

As mentioned above, Hillage rejigged the track order for this release, resulting in LP closer Earthrise being the first thing from Open that we get here.  It's based on a melody by Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, and works well in this arrangement.  The title track comes next, with a bit of nifty vocoder and the same twee-but-pleasant lyrics as on Motivation Radio.  As on the other Open tracks, the synths & sequences are well integrated with the guitars and gently funky rhythms, making this album a sort of distillation of its two predecessors, with its high point probably Day After Day (which was the original LP opener).  The Beatles cover is a bit slight but fun in a Hillage kind of way, and don't miss the muscular workout Don't Dither Do It near the end of the CD.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Rainbow Dome Musick
with Gong: You
with System 7: Point 3: Water

Gong - You (1974)

One more Gong/Hillage post for the time being, in the last (studio) occasion that they'd both intertwine.  This album is the sweet spot of psychedelic Gong for me, where they got to fully flex their musical muscles on four lengthy tracks, and the remaining short pieces are the ones that carry most of Daevid Allen's comic-space-opera narrative.

After You opens with two of the latter plus a short atmospheric instrumental, Hillage is the first to get the musical spotlight with Master Builder.  I'm assuming the main riff was his, as it would appear again as The Glorious Om Riff on Green, and his guitar solos here are nothing short of blinding.  The next track, the nine mind-bending minutes of A Sprinkling Of Clouds, might prefigure Rainbow Dome Musick to begin with, but the master synther in this case is Tim Blake rather than Hillage/Giraudy.

The absolute star of You, however, IMO has to be bassist Mike Howlett.  Rock solid throughout, the generous dose of psych-jazz-funk that he lays down throughout the album reaches its apex on the ten minutes of The Isle Of Everywhere.  Laying down a hypnotic bassline that Holger Czukay might've been proud of, everyone from Blake to Hillage to the French percussion team that would shortly take ownership of the band gets a chance to shine on this album high point.

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Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick (1979)

Basically an essential post to round up the recent spotlighting of Steve Hillage, and one of the most essential ambient albums ever made, full stop.  Synths and sequencers had been increasing in prominence from Motivation Radio to Green, and for their next studio album Steve & Miquette went all in with these two side-long instrumental pieces.

Written for the Mind-Body-Spirit Festival that took place at the London Olympia from 21-29 April 1979, the album was released shortly before the event and credited its A side to Miquette Giraudy as composer, and B side to Hillage.  Fast forward a decade, and Hillage famously walks into a club's chillout room only to find the record being spun by Alex Patterson of The Orb, leading to Hillage & Giraudy's creative rebirth as System 7.

Rainbow Dome Musick's first half is called Garden Of Paradise, and it appears to be a garden with a stream running through it given the opening water sounds.  The gentle synths, electric piano and bells bubble and tinkle around, and at the halfway point the garden's birds burst into life, soaring and singing with Hillage's lead guitar part.  After the piece settles back down to the synths and fades away, the second half of the Dome experience is announced by a single bell, and the much, much trippier synths of Four Ever Rainbow start to worm their way into your subconscious.  Hillage sparingly plays mellow echo-guitar, but otherwise lets the womb-like electronics envelop the listener completely.  Beyond-essential ambience.

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Steve Hillage - Green (1978)

In early 1977, Steve & Miquette had two albums planned: one was to be The Red Album, the other The Green Album.  The former became Motivation Radio, from last Friday's post, but the latter kept to the original theme in its final title.  Whether it was the original intention or a later evolution, the distinction is clear - where Motivation Radio was rockier and more song-based, with only one instrumental, Green is over 50% instrumental, and points the way forward to Hillage & Giraudy's future direction.

Nick Mason was an apt choice for producer, as you can definitely draw more obvious parallels between Green and the classic Floyd sound.  Again, though, the lyrics are much more upbeat than Roger Waters' glass-half-empty world, and although very much of their time are accessible and heartfelt rather than just stoned ramblings (which I think is where I struggle with Gong, only really warming to them when Pierre Moerlen takes over.  But anyway, back to Hillage and Green.)

As mentioned above, with the exception of Unidentified Flying Being, which feels like more of a Motivation Radio track, this album is much spacier and atmospheric.  Most of the tracks flow into each other, and UFB segues into a stunning instrumental suite that will only be broken by one more minute of singing for the rest of the album.  Miquette and Steve really come into their own here as masters of ambient sequencing and other synth wonders, and this is also uniquely the album where Hillage favours guitar synth over regular guitar, further broadening the electronic palette.  Ending with a reworked Gong theme, Green really is space rock par excellence, and certainly my most enduring favourite in its genre.

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Steve Hillage - Motivation Radio (1977)

Back to Steve Hillage, with his third solo album.  Appearing after two solid slabs of psychedelic prog, this is where Hillage reshaped his sound around the funk and proto-disco music he was unashamedly enjoying at the time (despite fans who spoke to him carping about it, which only spurred him on).  The result was a massively fun record of eight tightly arranged shorter songs, and a cute little cover of Not Fade Away to finish.

Motivation Radio's lyrics can seem a bit dated (however, is it just me that finds Radio quite prescient, given the rise of the internet/social media as an admittedly imperfect counter to mainstream media?) and hippy-dippy, but at their heart just boil down to self-confidence/self-discovery platitudes and other messages of positivity.  Which is kind of nice; there's a great line in the AMG review of the album, although I suspect they won't have been the first to use it, about Motivation Radio being "the light side of the moon" in comparison to the largely downbeat Pink Floyd MO of the era.

Floyd are a vaguely useful musical comparison too; the album has a great 70s rock production with a generous dose of synth, both courtesy of Malcom Cecil of Tonto's Exploding Head Band, and there's also lingering traces of Hillage's time in Gong (see Octave Doctors).  Miquette Giraudy's synth talent, pointing the way to the future, is worth mentioning too.  What really elevates Motivation Radio, though, are Hillage's great guitars, energising the whole record with driving riffs and blistering leads.  When this coincides with the more purple lyrics, the result is a nice balancing act that stops the songs seeming too twee - Light In The Sky and Saucer Surfing are perfect examples.  With a tight rhythm section wrapping all this up, the result is just a wonderful album.

More to come on Monday! ;)

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System 7 - Point 3: Water Album (1994)

Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy - what can I say.  Legendary power couple of UK psychedelia and electronica, like a version of Chris & Cosey where their hippy roots didn't take a turn for the extreme in the 70s but stayed largely sunny and upbeat.  Their music always cheers me up when necessary, and was planning some posts when by happy coincidence, got a request in the comments last week.  On Friday there'll be some classic 70s Hillage, but for today, here's my favourite album by System 7, Hillage & Giraudy's electronic umbrella project formed in the late 80s out of their friendship with Alex Paterson of The Orb.

Point 3 was released in October 1994 in two versions: the more uptempo Fire, which I'm not as much a fan of; and Water, which is possibly my favourite album of 90s ambient/trance.  With a 74 minute album that just flows so perfectly with featherweight synths and Hillage's keening lead guitar, it's hard to pick out favourites.  Nevertheless, I'm going to go for the 14 minute Coltrane, with its Balinese frogs, and the 13 minute Alpha Wave - the extended running times all the better to hypnotise you with - and Dr Livingstone I Presume, with its vocal sounds.  Everywhere though, there's gorgeous music, great sound effects, and top-notch collaborators like Derrick May, Laurent Garnier and Youth helping out with the production.  The glide goes on forever.

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