GAZEUSE!

This album is really the debut of the Gong spin-off known as "Pierre Moerlen's Gong" - they changed their name to that as soon as their contract with Virgin, and other Gong factions with other lineups performed parallel to them even before then - one wonders whether the name change would have happened sooner had Virgin Records been up for it.

The group plays a highly percussion-focused brand of fusion which at points is reminiscent of the work on Billy Cobham's Spectrum album. The lineup is structured around a core unit of no less than four percussionists, with a few other musicians to round out the sound - standouts here include Allan Holdsworth on guitar and Didier Malherbe on flute and sax. Though the band occasionally dip into 1970s rock/fusion cliches (a drum solo, when you have so many other awesome percussion instruments to play with? Really, Pierre?) but is otherwise a reasonably confident first draft of this Gong incarnation's distinctive style.