GONG — You: Radio Gnome Invisible, Part 3 (review)

GONG — You: Radio Gnome Invisible, Part 3 album cover Album · 1974 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
With You , GonG ends this fabulous trilogy where the Pothead Pixies find Tolkien's trilogy and rip it apart , laughing at this sombre history , much preferring the silliness of their own story , The Planet GonG Mythology. I think that this is the only time GonG had a stable line-up that lasted two albums , but it won't last long as Daevid and his now wife Gilly will leave at the end of this album (maybe even before the release of it - I'm not sure). After this album , the Gong world will lose the silly and absurd link to Planet Gong: From GonG , they will become Gong heading in a much jazzier direction and further albums can easily be identified as Fusion or Canterbury albums.

Two relatively short and trivial tracks start on side1 but soon comes the Invocation and the trip start on a cosmic level throughout Master Builder and Sprinkling of Clouds to end in such heavenly manner some 17min later. Rarely has such repetitive rhythms been so captivating but the better is yet to come.

Side 2 starts with another short track but again the cosmic trip takes off this time for some 22 minutes of pure paradise, superb interplay between Hillage , Malherbe and keenly underlined by Tim Blake's ethereal synthetic layers. This superb and stunning artwork is perfectly suited to match and evoke the music developed on the disc.

Of all the early GonG albums, this is the only one that was relatively well respected in its sleeve artwork (also the only one that was not a gatefold sleeve) but nevertheless Charly Records released a mini-lp (on Victor label cat#61174) not only respecting the artwork but also reproducing the lyrics and explanations of the end of Radio gnome Invisible's emission of Planet GonG's message of peace, love and fun. Stunning, stupendous , mirific , flabbergasting.
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