Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Gong
Label: Arista Records
Release date: February 9, 1979
Running time: 40:06
Rating: 4/5
In 1977, eccentric Australian musician Daevid Allen decided to once again lead his own version of Gong, the legendary pioneers of the Canterbury prog rock scene, this time under the temporary name Planet Gong. French drummer Pierre Moerlen had inherited the remains of the space-rock Gong from Allen and spent the next few years turning them into a full-blown jazz rock fusion collective. With a copyright mess looming, he had no choice but to tack his own name onto the band’s. »Downwind« was the first official album from Moerlen’s faction of Gong, which had unofficially been born back in 1976 with »Shamal«.
Pierre, his younger brother Benoît on percussion, bassist Hansford Rowe (who later co-founded Gongzilla), new guitarist Ross Record and percussionist Francois Causse decided to tweak the tried-and-true instrumental jazz fusion recipe, with its heaps of assorted percussion, for »Downwind«. They did something they never repeated on any Pierre Moerlen’s Gong album except »Breaktrough« (1986) – they cooked up two hard rock/pop/soft rock hybrids, »Aeroplane« and »What You Know«. The latter features former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor as a guest, leaving his mark in what was his second collaboration with Moerlen’s Gong. Both of these off-type creations, with guitarist Record on vocals, leave you with pretty mixed feelings, because they sound like a not especially happy meeting between Uriah Heep and Air Supply. So the decision not to repeat anything like it on later albums, »Breaktrough« aside, was the right one.
In style, »Crosscurrents« recalls the approach to jazz fusion that Moerlen established on the studio predecessor »Expresso II« (1978) – total domination by drums and all kinds of percussion. The big-name guest this time was Mike Oldfield, who contributed a distinctive guitar solo to the excellent twelve-minute, prog-rock-leaning title track, where Steve Winwood (Traffic), yet another legend of the golden age of progressive rock, also joined in on keyboards. The instrumental »Emotions« turned out wonderfully too: amid fragile vibraphone sounds and symphonic curtains, the melancholic violin of Didier Lockwood (Magma) charmed the most. It’s truly incredible how Oldfield’s trademark guitar sound took center stage and made this mystically ambient piece sound like some forgotten solo track from his best creative period.
Less impressive is the otherwise decent cover of the rhythmic treat »Jin-Go-Lo-Ba«, created in 1959 by Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji and popularized most of all by Santana, who covered it as »Jingo« on their 1969 studio debut, though plenty of other musicians have covered it since, Moerlen’s Gong included. The sonic direction that would win out on the band’s future efforts is perhaps best reflected by the closing composition »Xtasea«, which packs in lots of percussion variations with ‘hammer-like’ mallets, gentle violin arrangements and juicy guitar passages, all while an extremely pleasant ambient texture sits up front.
With »Downwind«, Moerlen’s Gong reached their creative zenith and recorded yet another highly interesting album, one that was already showing cracks and small signs of a creative crisis in places. It was no surprise, really, that things only went downhill creatively with the next studio efforts, which grew more and more artistically hollow. Ironically, of the three stylistically different pieces with which Moerlen wanted to air out his band’s sound on »Downwind«, only the title track turned out impressive, while nobody would miss the two commercially minded, soft-rock-flavored compositions.
Lineup
Pierre Moerlen – drums, percussion, organ, synthesizer, electric piano, vocals
Hansford Rowe – bass guitar
Ross Record – guitar, vocals
Benoît Moerlen – vibraphone
François Causse – percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Mike Oldfield – guitar, bass guitar, Irish drum (3)
Steve Winwood – keyboards (3)
Didier Malherbe – saxophone (3)
Didier Lockwood – violin (2,6,7)
Mick Taylor – guitar (5)
Terry Oldfield – flute (3)
Production
Pierre Moerlen
Track list
1. Aeroplane (2:39)
2. Crosscurrents (6:11)
3. Downwind (12:30)
4. Jin-Go-Lo-Ba (3:24)
5. What You Know (3:40)
6. Emotions (4:44)
7. Xtasea (6:39)
