EXPRESSO II

The transition which began on Gazeuse is completed on Expresso II, the second album by the Pierre Moerlen-led Gong lineup which would come to be known as "Pierre Moerlen's Gong". Despite some suitably chunky guitar riffs by Allan Holdsworth lighting up the start of Heavy Tune and some excellent violin contributions from Darryl Way, make no mistake about it - this is a percussion-led album, with intricate interweavings of drums, glockenspiels, vibes, xylophones and all the other percussion instruments you could not imagine underpinning everything.

There's not much to choose from between this and Gazeuse, but I tend to listen to this one more often - to my ears, there's just a little bit more bite and personality, though frustratingly the band don't express it very often. Expresso II is a good but not amazing contribution to the body of Canterbury-influenced fusion albums that cropped up in the late 1970s.