ROBOT WOMAN

The best of the three Robot woman Lps and as always with mother gong busting over with great musicians. This makes the resulting dross even more irritating to endure. When Gilli is confined to space-whispering she really is a great vocalist however she seems to approach Mother Gong as a soapbox for her feminist/hippy/right hand witchcraft/anarchist politics. This gets very wearing very very quickly. Do we buy Lps to be preached to by Middle class hippies ? I don't. There are a few half decent pop tunes here "Australia" which encourages us to go live in Australia because its a pretty nice place you know. is about as lighthearted as it gets, even so it is full of political references. Some of the rest of the Lyrics are truly dreadful " fix me with your screwdriver I need your screw driver " titter titter nudge nudge wink wink stuff and very annoying. Considering the time in which this came out many of the crowd probably did relate to the lyrics, but it really feels as though she is talking down to most folk. There are way to many lyrics on this record and somewhere under this is some OK but non essential music. To me it sounded like a contractual obligation LP so the release of a further 2 recordings was an unwelcome surprise. Mother Gong were never a studio band and it really shows. Live they were a goodish band to open or have at the start of the day to get people in the mood for far better things. Unless you cannot resist buying everything by Gong's female vocalist or you want an expel of Guy evens drumming outside of VDGG or maybe are fascinated by the potential of Hooper etc this is not an LP to buy otherwise. To my Knowledge Gilli released one LP which contains some strong cuts IE "MOTHER" which is not yet included here, but is essential to Gong fans. This is not essential in any sense.