Daevid Allen

Fabulous, inventive, smart & a lot more variety than I'd seen for a long time - VILLAGE VOICE nyc. The one & only invigorating & stimulating, disturbing & renewing daevid allen of gong JONNY GREENE gas wacky weird & truly wonderful - N.M.E. These CDs are in matt black card covers with silver and white printing. This is the fiftheenth of a 20CD series, each release a limited pressing of 1000 copies only - no more will be pressed.

2nd part of live 1980 gig - Limited release. This rare recording for broadcast by WKSU, Kent, Ohio is from Daevid's solo US Divided Alien tour in the of summer 1980… These CDs are in matt black card covers with silver and white printing. This is the ninth of a 20CD series, each release a limited pressing of 1000 copies only - no more will be pressed…

Double CD of unreleased alternative versions and different mixes of Daevid's first solo album - Banana Moon. Daevid Allen was one of the founders of the British progressive rock band the Soft Machine in 1966. After recording just one album with the group, he became the founder/leader of Gong, which he left in 1973 to begin a solo career (though his first solo album, Banana Moon, was released in 1971 while he was still in the group). Allen explored his quirky, folky take on rock throughout the '70s and '80s on albums like 1976's Good Morning and 1983's Alien in New York. His solo work also included collaborations with underground rock impresario Kramer like 1993's Who's Afraid? and 1996's Hit Men, which was released on Kramer's Shimmy Disc label.

Subtitled Live at the Mistake in Cleveland and released as volumes eight and nine of Voiceprint's Bananamoon Obscura series, this is not the original Divided Alien Playbax LP released in 1982, but a crudely recorded live performance from August 7, 1980. The sound is thin (audience recording, probably), but the good mastering job makes the album enjoyable, albeit a fan-only item (and a collector's item, too, since all volumes in this series are limited to 1,000 copies). In 1980, Daevid Allen toured America solo, singing, reciting and playing guitar over pre-recorded tapes. These playback tracks were put together from the 1980 New York Gong album About Time (featuring a completely revamped Gong lineup that included Fred Maher and Bill Laswell).

Still a mystery! "A series of gleefully pataphysical encounters with a mysterious creator of Big City Orchestra in SF Oakland, Cal. I mean just sip the first track" - from Daevid's notes on the back cover. Also titled; ub/zero - it both covers work that Daevid has done with Big City Orchestra over the past 20 years, and new noisey tracks! These CDs are in matt black card covers with silver and white printing. This is the seventh of a 20CD series, each release a limited pressing of 1000 copies only - no more will be pressed.

You've got to love Daevid Allen. He might be in his '60s, but he's never lost or diluted his hippie sensibilities – instead he's just updated them musically as the years have passed. Playing with University of Errors (including former Pere Ubu keyboard player Tony Maimone), he has a harder sound than in the past (especially on tracks like "Skulls Of Our Enemies," which lives up to its hard name). And, overall, Ugly Music for Monica is a deeper meditation than much of his previous work – "Rich Men Eat My Voice" offers a caustic snub of the Rupert Murdoch's of this world, while "If You Die" is a speculation on what happens after. But there's still room for the old whimsical Allen. He brings out his old "Pot Head Pixies" theme song and dresses it up in new clothes for "PHP 2032," then dusts off Kevin Ayers' "Clarence In Wonderland" (a song that needs to be paraded around every few years). If you love the "Daevid Allen" of yore, this tougher edge might not sit easily. But if you appreciate someone who can remain curious and vital as he gets older, this is definitely for you.

Mother Gong is basically the partnership of singer Gilli Smyth and multi-instrumentalist Harry Williamson along with various friends and family, including saxophonist Robert Calvert, who essays some lovely solos on "Unseen Ally" and "La Dea Madri." Their former Gong bandmate Daevid Allen, as the credits humorously suggest, is "a collection of sub-personalities held together by their friend"; the sub-personalities on display on his half of the split album The Owl and the Tree are that of the Incredible String Band-like psych-folk gnome (a word that he pronounces with the G in the charming "The Owly Song") and the blissed-out space rocker on the lovely 14-and-a-half-minute multi-part suite "I Am My Own Lover." Mother Gong's half of the record is equally fine, a combination of prettily meandering instrumentals and Smyth's familiar fairy tale recitations…

A quirky mindstate altering one hour radio program in the form of an intense tape collage created by daevid on a Revox & TEAC four track tape recorder at BMO studio behind Mullumbimby NSW in Oz. This one hour program was one of the series of 12 for 2NCR radio Lismore and broadcast through the winter months of 1984. These CDs are in matt black card covers with silver and white printing. This is the fourteenth of a 20CD series, each release a limited pressing of 1000 copies only - no more will be pressed.