GAZEUSE!

For Jazz-Rock fanatics, this album is a must buy. Gong really did a masterful work with this release and it quickly became one of my favourite Jazz-Rock recordings. The addition of Allan Holdsworth on guitars as a replacement for Steve Hillage really worked well here, giving the album a typical Holdsworth sounding appealing to it. His playing and solos flows together hand in hand with the elegant and jamming jazz-fusion music masterfully, and the overall mood features an unique and typical "late-night listening" atmosphere. The heavy use of marimbas, xylophones and glockenspiels has a colourful and relaxing effect on the music, something that obviously would be a trademark for Gong on later releases, but it works best here, "Percolations Part 1" being the best example of this, considering that the whole track is made with percussion instruments. Didier Malherbe is not so dominant here, contributing fewer saxophone parts than before, all being very good though. Pierre Moerlen's drumming is brilliant as always and his brilliant and incredibly tight drumming gives me goosebumps everytime.

Overall; a very colourful, percussion and guitar oriented jazz-rock release from Gong, backed up with the excellent playing from all musicians involved, very few weak moments. Actually, the only weak moment here is "Mirielle" which is a relaxing track and good in itself, only weaker than the rest of the album generally. Too bad this album is often overlooked and forgotten, because it's a great album and I would strongly recommend this album to any starving jazz-rock fanatic who looks after some more jazz-rock to listen to. Enjoy!

My rating: 4.6/5

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