Gong
Sunday, December 1, 2024
Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Legendary psychedelic prog rockers Gong paid their first-ever visit to the Slovenian capital — a city that prog rock bands drop by about as often as it rains in the Gobi Desert. Their show at Kino Šiška was part of the ‘Unending Ascending’ tour, named after their current studio album.
Before the show kicked off, it hit more than a few people in the crowd that Gong — who today don’t have a single original member left — have been at it in various incarnations, with the occasional break, for over 55 years, which is more than most of their peers can say. One of prog rock’s most resilient outfits was founded way back in 1967 by the late Australian guitarist/vocalist Daevid Allen and his equally late wife Gilli Smyth. This cult international outfit with French roots — which many critics also classify as space rock and place within the so-called Canterbury scene — became notorious among prog rock fans in the early seventies thanks to the conceptual album trilogy “Radio Gnome Invisible”. On that trilogy — still regarded as a masterpiece by countless prog devotees to this day — Allen laid out a gloriously psychedelic and eccentric mythology of flying teapots, stoned pixies, and Octave Doctors from Planet Gong, all of it very obviously fuelled by various mind-altering substances. Fittingly, nobody was surprised to spot a genuinely fascinating mix of punters in the crowd before the show — mostly grey-haired musical scholars and hippyish ‘herbal’ characters of a decidedly peculiar variety.
After the classic Gong lineup fell apart in the mid-seventies, several ‘offshoots’ gradually emerged — Pierre Moerlen’s Gong, New York Gong, Mother Gong, Planet Gong, Paragong, Gongmaison, Gongzilla — all of them part of the wider Gong family. Among former Gong members, the one who deserves special mention above all is guitar virtuoso Steve Hillage, who has built a remarkable solo career of his own.
In the early nineties, Allen gradually managed to resurrect the classic Gong lineup, which he led almost right up to his death in 2015. Just before he died, he gave his blessing to the new, younger incarnation of Gong — who had collaborated with him on the ‘farewell’ album “I See You” (2014) — to carry on. The new Gong — featuring Anglo-Iranian guitarist/vocalist Kavus Torabi in place of Allen, plus Brazilian guitarist Fabio Golfetti, bassist Dave Sturt, saxophonist Ian East, and drummer Cheb Nettles — have now recorded three studio albums and one live album without Allen. New Gong draw their setlist mainly from these three studio efforts, which is understandable to a degree. Despite carrying on the recognisable musical style, they’re essentially a completely different band compared to ‘classic’ Gong. Only occasionally — when the crowd does enough to earn it with their energy and participation — do they fire up the time machine and throw in a classic from the Allen era, i.e. the first half of the seventies.
The announced support act Fruit Salad Lights was nowhere to be seen, yet the small hall was completely sold out for the evening — pretty surprising for a band that has never had a hit in their long career and never once bothered trying to write one. Gong were free to kick off their space rock party and psychedelic journey to Planet Gong and the Radio Gnomes from Allen’s drug-fuelled dreams. They opened with the new track “My Guitar is a Spaceship” from the current studio album “Unending Ascending” (2023), immediately making it clear they were in outstanding live form.
The latest Gong incarnation may only have been together for ‘just’ ten years, but from the very first second of their set they reminded us that these are no wet-behind-the-ears youngsters Allen taught to walk — these are seasoned musical masters in their middle and late-middle years. Torabi — who in his ‘spare time’ fronts Knifeworld and collaborates with bands like Guapo and The Utopia Strong — commands extraordinary stage charisma, while his look brings to mind an older ‘cousin’ of the legendary Marc Bolan (T. Rex). His guitar chops are at an enviable level, while his vocal timbre bears a strong resemblance to Allen’s. Torabi’s guitar partner Golfetti — who leads his own prog outfit Violeta de Outono — is a genuine guitar virtuoso who occasionally treats himself to bizarre sonic ‘séances’ up and down the fretboard, using various ‘implements’ that would earn a nod of approval from the likes of Adrian Belew (ex-King Crimson) and Fred Frith (Henry Cow). Saxophonist East, with his jazz-inflected passages, brings to the band’s sound that lucidity and eccentricity which are such an essential part of this cult group’s classic sound. Watching and listening to East’s sax antics, more than a few fans of Gong’s peers Van der Graaf Generator will find themselves haunted by the painful thought of how much energy and firepower VDGG lost when saxophonist David Jackson departed — while Gong still sound as good as they did in their prime.
Sturt — well known to all fans of the cult, and sadly long-inactive, Jade Warrior — is not just an excellent bassist but also a talented backing vocalist. Drummer Nettles — who any number of prog metal bands would gladly snap up — thoroughly surprised us all with his thunderous fills across the kit and his occasional use of a double bass pedal, which made the band sound, at moments, pretty damn heavy, if not almost ‘metal’ — something the less psychedelic-‘tripped-out’ section of the crowd must have thoroughly enjoyed.
Next came “Kapital” from the album “Rejoice! I am Dead!” (2016). That track dates from when Allen — who also wrote its socially critical lyrics — was still alive. Also from that album came “Rejoice!”, which contains one of Allen’s most mischievous and tragicomic lyrics — one that makes it feel as though he’s watching us from his Gong dimension and laughing at our mad world. Torabi repeatedly trained wild-eyed stares on the audience, bringing to mind a mad doctor — or a young Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull). Of course, when it comes to building stage charisma, Torabi had the best possible teacher in Allen, though today’s Gong are considerably less eccentric and don’t dress up in all sorts of outlandish costumes the way they did back when the grey-bearded patriarch was calling the shots. And it’s probably safe to say that none of the current members indulge in various mind-altering substances (any more), either.
The first genuine highlight of the show was the performance of Gong classic “Master Builder” from the album “You” (1974), the third instalment of the “Radio Gnome Invisible” trilogy. They stretched it out properly with instrumental ‘mantric’ passages and the building of walls of sound at various heights, while a recorded address from Allen added a whole extra dimension to the proceedings. His spirit still watches over the band, which is clearly destined to keep playing long after his death. The band members made no secret of their delight at the crowd, who let themselves go in very different ways that evening, largely according to their individual audiovisual experience of the Gong sound. While some — mostly younger attendees — were so ‘gone’ they never once looked toward the stage, instead dancing ecstatically like they’d lost their minds, the majority of the crowd revelled in the extraordinary tight chemistry of the whole band and the unique atmosphere they managed to conjure up time and again. Some of the instrumental sections, with their heavy use of echo effects and extended sustain, did drag on just a little — but anyone who knows Gong knows they’ve always loved doing that, right from their early years. During those moments, anyone with even a sliver of imagination can let their mind drift somewhere else entirely — no mind-altering substances required.
Torabi even went to the trouble of dropping in a few simple Slovenian phrases — ‘dober dan’, ‘dober večer’, ‘hvala’ — which was a lovely gesture and further proof that Gong have never been the kind of stuffy English snobs that rock music has in such plentiful supply. Their complete lack of commercial success has, as a result, meant they never got ‘spoiled’. For the encore, Gong played “Insert Yr Own Prophecy” from “Rejoice! I am Dead!” and the classic “You Can’t Kill Me” from the second album “Camembert Electicque” (1971). They normally only pull out the latter on special occasions when they’re truly happy with the crowd’s response — because, in Torabi’s words, they ‘live in the present, not the past’, which is why they ‘fire up the time machine very rarely’.
The Gong show was a win for all fans of the psychedelic school of prog rock — with its emphasis on space rock and jazz-rock fusion — who finally got to see one of the key representatives of the Canterbury scene visit Ljubljana. The small hall at Kino Šiška proved to be an excellent choice for a band like today’s Gong. The only downside was the pillars on both sides of the stage, which — given the considerable crowd — blocked parts of the stage for many attendees, particularly any decent view of drummer Nettles, who was often practically hidden. The sound was spot on for the small hall throughout, while the psychedelically-spiced lighting was a story all of its own. Gong, long notorious for their psychedelic light show, have in this regard learned plenty from early Pink Floyd. Who knows — maybe Gong will make another appearance in Ljubljana before 2032, when, according to Allen’s prophecies, the Earth and Planet Gong are supposed to make contact, find themselves in the same dimension, and ‘align’ into a single planet.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. My Guitar Is a Spaceship
2. Kapital
3. All Clocks Reset
4. Rejoice!
5. Tiny Galaxies
6. My Sawtooth Wake
7. Through Restless Seas I Come
8. Lunar Invocation
9. Master Builder (with “Hello Me” by Daevid Allen as an introduction)
10. Choose Your Goddess
—encore—
11. Insert Yr Own Prophecy
12. You Can’t Kill Me
