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Gong – Camembert Electrique (2024)
Review:
If a mischievous garden gnome ate an entire tin of hash brownies and fell into a dream about early Soft Machine throwing a party in Syd Barrett’s hair… well, to be honest, it still probably wouldn’t sound quite like Camembert Electrique. But it would be as plausible an origin story for Gong’s sui generis second album as anything else. Daevid Allen, peripatetic Aussie and Gong’s resident Mad Hatter, was in fact a founding member of Soft Machine, though he was gone before their first album. He formed the first, amorphous version of Gong in Paris in 1967, and by 1971’s Camembert Electrique, they were a proper, dialed-in band, stirring up a swirling cocktail of post-psychedelia, early space rock, feral jazz fusion, and dadaist humor. Over the course of the record, they evoke spiritual yearning, naked lust, gleeful absurdity, amiable defiance, and self-effacing mysticism. Shockingly, they were just getting warmed up. Some signature Gong elements wouldn’t be introduced until the celebrated 1973-’74 Radio Gnome trilogy (Tim Blake’s cosmic synth confections, Steve Hillage’s wool-hatted Hendrixisms, Allen’s goofy, goodhearted sci-fi mythology). But between Gilli Smyth’s heavily processed “space whisper” and celestial spoken word offerings, Allen’s alternately trippy and trenchant arsenal of transmogrified guitar tones, and wind wizard Didier Malherbe’s Day-Glo Coltrane saxplorations, the core of the Gong sound arrives on Camembert Electrique. (Trace elements of the early Softs’ jazzy stoner whimsy show up on the record, as well as Allen’s update of Barrett’s spaced-out “glissando guitar” technique, which involves bowing the fretboard with a metal bar. The band’s backstory informs a fair amount of Electrique. For instance, kooky, electronically tweaked tape-cutup interludes bookend each side of the original LP, foretelling Allen’s early ’60s tape-loop adventures with avant-garde composer Terry Riley. The storm-the-barricades spirit of the 1968 Paris riots, in which the band had been enmeshed, comes through on the confrontational “You Can’t Kill Me,” reinforced by the manic repetition of wah-wah-soaked unison riffs. And the dreamy abstractions that began with Gong’s earlier incarnations find their ultimate realization on “I Am Your Fantasy,” as Smyth’s spacey syllables float across Christian Tritsch’s poignant, chordal bass playing and the interstellar smears of Allen’s guitar and Malherbe’s flute. Allen and company contrast all the headiness by pushing periodic blasts of merry-prankster humor to the forefront. The woozy medley “I’ve Bin Stone Before/Mister Long Shanks/O Mother” comes off like a cross between one of Monty Python’s musical numbers and a fever dream of a British music hall production. Psychedelia was past its expiration date by ‘71, but Gong found new ways to freak out. The extended modal jam occupying much of “Fohat Digs Holes in Space” provides plenty of room for Allen’s gliss-guitar excursions over Tritsch’s hypnotic, see-sawing bass and drummer Pip Pyle’s jazzy skitter. “Tried So Hard,” introduced by some tender, upper-register Tritsch lines, is a tug-of-war between gentle folk-rock balladry and wild-eyed prog maneuvers. Having not yet unveiled his own mythological concepts, Allen instead courts the Greek moon goddess on “Tropical Fish: Selene.” It’s one of the album’s jazzier journeys, with a good dose of psych-swing jamming and a constantly shifting structure. Over their next few albums, Gong would get more complex, but Camembert Electrique is probably their most visceral release. It’s the one where all the cosmic laughs, sex, spirituality, and adventure feel close enough to the ground to reach up and touch. And the 2024 remaster makes those pothead pixie antics pop with even more aplomb. — bandcamp
Track List:
01 Radio Gnome
02 You Can't Kill Me
03 I've Bin Stone Before: Mister Long Shanks: O Mother
04 I Am Your Fantasy
05 Dynamite: I Am Your Animal
06 Wet Cheese Delirium
07 Squeezing Sponges over Policemen's Heads
08 Fohat Digs Holes in Space
09 Tried so Hard
10 Tropical Fish: Selene
11 Gnome the Second
Media Report:
Genre: prog-rock, psychedelic rock
Origin: France 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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