review by daniel

While Pierre Moerlen's Gong did their best to develop/deteriorate into a jazz rock outfit, Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth toured with the new Gong offshot Planet Gong. This is a live recording from that tour.

Do not expect Allen and Smyth to just continue their old space trip, though; the best parts of the album do not sound nostalgic at all. There are some rather stale tracks in the middle of the album that sound like leftover material from an early Gong album, but the freshness and youthful enthusiasm of tracks like ”Floating Anarchy” and ”Ali Baba” more than make up for it. ”Ali Baba” sounds like an attempt to out-Hawkwind Hawkwind (Hawkwind would not have the patience for the gradual build-up, though) with its crunchy repetitious guitar, manic chanting and general energetic roughness. A great space rock track.

I do miss Didier Malherbe's saxes, since I think he is an essential part of the Gong sound, but that is only an issue on the earlier mentioned nostalgic tracks. I do, however, not miss Pierre Moerlen or Pip Pyle behind the drums, because the new drummer does a great job throughout. He avoids fancy stuff in favour of really busy and straightforward drumming that suits the roughed-up Gong perfectly.

To sum things up; no space jazz, minimal presence of pothead pixies, no sax, a lot of energetic, guitar dominated space rock. And a good album.