Gong / Daevid Allen / Gilly Smyth - Magick Brother CD
SKU
28-CHAY529305.2
This is the first time that this 1969 classic has been reissued from the actual 1969 BYG master tapes; at least that is what they are promising...
The first 'Gong' album is really an early Daevid & Gilli album from 1969, after they were forced to leave England, & settled in Paris. Kinda folky/psychedelic in a genuine 1969 way. You can hear the embryonic Gong sound here and a lot more as well.
Nicely replicates the original gatefold sleeve, with Daevid's fun scribbles on the inside. A really nice, psych/folk album with hints of Gong, but don't expect "You" with this one...
“Having been part of the fabled ‘Canterbury scene’ along with luminaries such as Robert Wyatt and Pip Pyle the irrepressible Australian guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Daevid Allen formed Gong with Welsh vocalist Gilli Smyth in Paris at the end of the ‘60s as France was in state of ferment. The pair actually had to exit France and take refuge in Majorca after falling foul of the authorities and finding themselves subject to an arrest warrant.
Following their return to Paris in the summer of 1969 at the instigation of film director Jérome Laperrousaz, for whom they cut a soundtrack, Allen and Smyth were asked to record once again by Jean Karakos of BYG, the label formed by himself, Jean-Luc Young and Fernand Boruso. With the addition of French saxophonist Didier Malherbe, bass guitarist Christian Tritsch and drummer Rachid Houari Gong was born in earnest and waxed Magick Brother before going on to make an appearance at the Actuel festival in Amougies, Belgium. Although Tritsch couldn’t make the studio session, jazz double bassists Barre Phillips and Earl Freeman and pianist Burton Greene – all of whom released fine albums on BYG – contributed to several tracks.
Magick Brother introduced Gong as one of the great oddities of the psychedelic and space rock age. The nucleus of Allen, Smyth and Malherbe was able to create a musical vocabulary very much of its own all the while searching for essential metaphysical truths.”