I'm not sure how this escaped my attention at the time, but I wasn't aware of this album until after Hillage's second album, L, was out. A friend at university had a copy, and I was ambivalent when I heard it then, but later picked it up cheap on CD.
This was Hillage's solo album, made while still with Gong, and with all his Gong bandmates, except Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth, and given that Hillage had taken on a share of the writing for Gong's Angel's Egg and You albums, it's interesting to see how this develops.
Solar Musick Suite, a seventeen minute piece in four parts, really feels more similar to Hillage's early 1970s band, Khan, than it does to Gong, with a jangly guitar opening and some leaden vocals before and after extended guitar and keyboard (from Dave Stewart) meanderings. Fish is a minute and a half of aquatic mayhem before the first half ends with Meditation Of The Snake, an echoing guitar piece not too far removed from his Gong solo, Castle In The Clouds.
But after a disappointing first half, things look up with The Salmon Song, far more Gong-like, with a catchy riff underpinning everything, as well as some dreamy guitar work accompanied by some wonderful bassoon from Lindsay Cooper (ex-Henry Cow), definitely the highpoint of the album. We finish with Aftaglid, a fifteen minute 'epic', divided into seven parts (rather pretentiously each given its own title). But if you get past the hippy nonsense about silver ladders, astral meadows and glidding, there's actually a very listenable (mostly) instrumental piece, with some gentle guitar work, as well as some dirty rock.
There's more to this album than first meets the ear, but it's mostly in the second half, where Hillage seems to play more freely looking forward, rather than back at what's gone before.
3* - After a disappointing opening. this improves into some cosmic hippie rock as the album proceeds.
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