Gong you say? aren't they (shudder) prog? Well, not on their first album, which is what Magick Brother is. On this, their first album, they are well and truly psychedelic, abrasive and weird. I suspect that people shy away from Gong for the same reason they shy away from the Grateful Dead ("smelly hippies!") but Gong were as heathenistic and politically offensive as any other revolutionary in 1969. Plus they were just plain weird musically, as can be heard on the first track of this CD. "Mystic Sister:Magick Brother" starts off the CD with weird Syd Barrettesque guitar and what sounds like a woman having an orgasm. Daevid Allen, the guitarist/vocalist for the band, played his guitar by rubbing it with a set of long metal rods, making an eerie moaning/whining sound that he ran through echo pedals. His partner, Gilli Smyth, performed a singspeak style of vocalizing that became called "spacewhisper" in the Gong-universe. The first half of the first song consists of that eerie guitar and spacewhisper, which plops down into an acoustic folksong with demented proto-jazz bass playing and weird woodwind stylings, while head Gong Daevid Allen tells us that the answers to all of our spiritual questions can be found within ourselves (only not as preachy as I make it sound). Other highlights include the anti-capitalistic "Chainstore Chant:Pretty Miss Titty," which features a very odd guitar solo from Daevid while Gilli Smith recites an early version of her "Prostitute Poem" over the top, and "Ego," a jaunty little singalong about death.

There are so many high points to this record that it's hard to sum them up. "Princess Dreaming" sounds like a hundred cats run through a wah wah pedal with Gilli Smyth reciting a poem on top of it, while "Cos You Got Green Hair" floats about three feet off the ground throughout. Mixed in with all the musical weirdness are some sharp observations hidden behind a cloak of daffy wit.

The sound quality of "Magick Brother" is somewhat lo-fi, as the band recorded the whole album on a movie camera. They had all of three tracks to work with, but all the instruments are audible, and since when did great production have anything to do with it being a good album or not?

Gong may be despised by some as being smelly prog jazzrock hippies, but on their first record (and, I would argue, up till Daevid Allen left the band) they were nothing of the sort. Anybody who likes the music mentioned in these other reviews owes it to themselves to sample Daevid Allen's brand of loonieness depicted here.

Reviews Index