LIVE AT THE GONG UNCONVENTION

Steve Hillage had largely transitioned from a free festival headlining space rock guitar hippy into a house music artist at this point in time, but he'd never dropped the guitar and when the Gong Family Unconvention of 2006 came around things were chill enough between all parties that Hillage, Miquette Giraudy, and their backing band were willing to do a set of Hillage's solo work - mostly the sort of stuff you'd expect, but there's an extended and substantially proggier version of These Uncharted Lands from For To Next which ends up an unexpected treat of a closing number.

Nostalgic revival projects like this are a mixed bag, but in the case of this appearance Steve and his band deliver a more than acceptable set. The performance would pave the way for a stint of live appearances, working as an opening act for Gong, during Steve and Miquette's short-lived return to the fold, but it wouldn't see a new studio album released or anything like that, and to be honest that's only to be expected given that their ongoing explorations of the spacier, ambient ends of EDM are clearly their creative priority these days. Still, both as a souvenir of a nice reunion concert and a decent-quality life rendition of this material - some of which had never been performed live in Steve's original run as a solo artist - it's pretty good.