GONG — Gongmaison (review)

GONG — Gongmaison album cover Album · 1989 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Warthur
Gongmaison - "Gong", as in the Daevid Allen-led incarnation of the band, circa the classic Angel's Egg trilogy, and "maison" as in French for "house", as in house music. The Gongmaison project saw Allen pull together a range of musicians - including Gong stalwarts such as Didier Malherbe - for an experiment in fusing the classic Gong sound with modern-day dance music.

The connection isn't as left-field as you might think - Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy would launch a second career as System 7 a couple of years down the line when they realised the potential of taking their Rainbow Dome experiments and applying those ideas to dance music, and Allen's own The Wise Man In Your Heart sounds an awful lot like a prototype of the genre to me. Still, whilst the experiment is fascinating the album simply makes me yearn for another listen to You instead of continuing with the interminable Flying T. Dance Mix.

On the whole, worth a look for Gong fans and a nice experiment in dabbling in a genre otherwise ignored or sneered at by prog musicians, and of course the partial reunion here eventually led to further Allen-fronted Gong projects down the line. But I wouldn't put it in the upper tiers of the expanded Gong discography.
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