In 1980, Gong's Daevid Allen was at a loose end, and found himself in New York, hooking up with former Gong champion and producer Giorgio Gomelsky. Gomelsky had assembled a band to work with some of his protegees, including guitarist Bill Laswell, and set Allen to work with them. The result was this album, billed as New York Gong.
I picked it up for a couple of quid on EBay recently, and am just getting round to considering it.
Opening with a spoken greeting, Preface, typically mystical, Allen suggests he wants to embrace punk/new wave, but the overall feeling to me is that he'd achieved this far more successfully a couple of years earlier as Planet Gong with the Here & Now Band.
Much Too Old has a strong backing, but little substance, and it moves into Black September almost seamlessly, without me noticing. Materialism, a band instrumental is eerily interesting (the band would later be known as Material), and the guitar work on Strong Woman is the most interesting part. I Am A Freud is a short, pleasant ditty, followed by the extended piece O My Photograph, which is enjoyable, if a bit silly in parts. Jungle Window is almost a proto-rap, saved only by a free sax accompaniment, and final track Hours Gone rocks us to a mediocre finish.
The whole thing feels like an album done for the sake of doing an album, not because the participants had something worthwhile to share. It's not awful, and there are one or two moments, but it's not really a major addition to the Gong catalogue.
2* - one or two moments, but for Gong obsessives only!
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