It’s a decade since Daevid Allen left us to take up a new cosmic address. It’s technically 11 years since I See You – Gong’s 13th studio album and his final recording on this earthly plane – was released. The band never were ones to yield to the dictates of time.
Invariably, figures of Allen’s stature have left their best material in the distant past, but I See You stands defiant as a work of towering vitality, a raised fist and even a raised finger on tracks like This Revolution – a denouement fitting for a man who occasionally went by the characteristically bonkers epithet Divided Alien Bert Camembert.
Perhaps the nicest touch on this 10th-anniversary edition is the blackened circular border around the wheel of life of the cover, imitating Gong’s classic debut Camembert Electrique from 1971. That direct homage indicates everything has come full circle, even if the wheel continues to roll without him – or the physical manifestation of him, at least.
It seems remarkable now that Gong formed because of a visa problem in Paris in 1968, the Adam’s rib from Soft Machine, taking a more circuitous, mayhem-strewn route towards enlightenment. Significantly, I See You was not only Allen’s last album, but guitarist Kavus Torabi’s first for the mystic travellers. As such, it feels more like a celebration of the cyclical nature of life – a passing of the baton – than it does a commiseratory tribute to a fallen leader.
This Revolution is a howl at capitalist idiocy that feels more pertinent than ever
Gong are still going strong with Torabi at the helm, a position bequeathed to him by Allen when the latter knew his cancer was terminal. Consequently, the album was less an end than a beginning; although tracks like the shimmering, shamanic closer Shakti Yoni & Dingo Virgin (honouring the group’s founders) might well cause a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye.
Elsewhere, Gong are mercurial and quixotic, rolling back the years on tracks like Occupy, which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Angel’s Egg. Syllabub finds Allen jiving over a funk groove with an unusual time signature, at least before it careens off to the Moon in a rigid 3/4 formation that turns out to be just an appetiser for some far out cosmic jazz.
And Pixielation is almost hip-hop in its big-beat dimensions, save for the odd hippy flute, cantering coda or intermittent ambient swathe that separates sections of the song with brownian noise.
But perhaps the most memorable moment of all is This Revolution, a Beat-like howl at capitalist idiocy that feels more pertinent than ever. ‘This revolution has already begun inside us,’ Allen intones, and it’s truly inspiring stuff. Shine on, Bert Camembert, shine on.
I See You is on sale now via Kscope.
