Gong

You Can't Kill Me is the title of an early Gong song from the album Camembert Electrique (1971) where Daevid Allen sang that you can kill the body but not the spirit. In a sense it is also the essence of this new album, to have his spirit live on in the music.
Back in October 2012 when Gong played at the Boerderij in Zoetermeer Allen introduced his band as the new generation of Gong. And shortly before he passed away in March 2015 in a statement published on his website he specifically encouraged the band to continue without him. He always wanted the band to be a collective, not depending on one or more individuals including himself. He had left the band before, in 1975, and after his departure Gong carried on for a few years led by Steve Hillage, Didier Malherbe and Pierre Moerlen…

You is the final installment in Gong's legendary Radio Gnome Trilogy, and it marks an important turning point for the band. By 1974, the psychedelic hippie/folk-rock element of the sound that was leader Daevid Allen's most important contribution was beginning to disappear…

In 1970, the world got its first taste of the original pothead pixie, Daevid Allen's Gong, as Magick Brother was released in France on the BYG label. Allen's wife, Gilli Smyth, penned all the tunes on the album, and Allen's now-classic "Ph.P." drawing style graces the inside of the gatefold. Leaning a little toward the pop end of the spectrum, Magick Brother is a fairly light album, devoid of the blatant psychedelic/hippie qualities which shine through so brilliantly on the later Camembert Electrique. Smyth's "space whispering" makes its debut on the opening track, though the album is not as spacy as it is ethereal. "Gong Song" is a highlight, with lyrics describing a pothead pixie who came down from the planet Gong to sing his green song - the roots of the Gong myth. Allen's guitar sound is a bit flat and hollow throughout the project, dynamics taking a back seat in most of these recordings…

After the departure of founder Daevid Allen the group Gong went through a rapid series of personnel changes with drummer/percussionist Pierre Moerlen becoming the de facto leader. The music evolved away from the psychedelic sound of the Allen-led era into jazz/rock fusion. By the time Expresso II (1978) was recorded Moerlen had assembled an almost entirely different group with a very different sound. With the completion of Gong's contract with Virgin Records the group name was changed to Pierre Moerlen's Gong to differentiate it from the other Gong offshoots and the original band.

Between Daevid Allen's departure from the band and Pierre Moerlen's official takeover of the band, there is Shamal. This transitional album contains none of the Allen-inspired psychedelia, but also very little of Moerlen's jazz influence…

Gazeuse! was the first in a successful line of strictly jazz-rock sessions for percussionist Pierre Moerlen and company – compositions that stressed jazz more than rock and which generally strayed away from lyrical content. This 1976 recording, also released under the title Expresso, was the band's first completely instrumental album, a companion piece to the later, somewhat warmer Expresso II, which is quite similar in sound and structure…