OBSOLETE

Dashiell Hedayat's Obsolete is in some respects a super-secret disguised Gong album, with Daevid Allen and cronies providing instrumental backing whilst Hedayat himself takes lead vocals. It's a slightly more rock-oriented brand of psychedelia than Gong's style of the era and has less jazz influence, but nonetheless is a hidden gem of the band's history. Canterbury historians will also be happy to note the presence of Robert Wyatt, Allen's old Soft Machine ally (as well as William Burroughs himself, who gave his blessing to Soft Machine naming themselves after one of his novels thanks to Allen getting his permission), making this something of a confluence of the radical countercultural end of Canterbury.