Gong - Shamal
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CD Details
Artist: GongEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1990-07-23
Music Label: Blue Plate Caroline
Soundtracks:
- Wingful Of Eyes
- Chandra
- Bombooji
- Cat In Clark's Shoes
- Manddrake
- Dhamal
Music reviews of Shamal
Music Review: A transitional album from Gong
Rating: 4 Stars
This 1975 album found the band without founding member Daevid Allen and exploring the mallet heavy jazz rock that characterized the Pierre Moerlen fronted version of the band. Although some folks do not like this album too much, I actually think that musically it is in pretty good form. Come to think of it, the tunes consist of a nice mixture of the spacey, heavy prog of 1971-1974 and the jazz rock of 1976-1977. Nick Mason (Pink Floyd drummer) produced the album and it sounds excellent.
The lineup at this point included a few holdovers from the Daevid Allen era Gong and some new members including: Mike Howlett (bass guitar, vocals); Didier "Bloom" Malherbe (Tenor and soprano saxophones, C and G flutes, bamboo flutes, and gongs); the superb Pierre Moerlen (drums, vibraphone, tubular bells); Miquette Giraudy (vocals on Bambooji); Mireille Bauer (marimba, glockenspiel, xylophone, assorted percussion and gongs); Steve Hillage (acoustic and electric guitars on Bambooji and Wingful of Eyes only); and Patrice Lemoine (electric and acoustic piano, mini moog synthesizer, and Hammond organ). Patrice was an active member of the French prog scene and played with members of the great French band Atoll and the band Arc amongst others. Although Patrice is a great player, I really miss the spacey synthesizers of Tim Blake. All of the musicians from the Shamal lineup are excellent and it was clear that although a major upheaval in personnel had occurred, the playing did not suffer one bit.
The six tracks on the album range in length from 3'03" to 9'54" and consist of a mixture of tunes with vocals and instrumentals. Unfortunately, I really do not think vocals were Mike's strong suit although they do not bother me too much. Although there are a few moments that hearken back to the heavy space prog of albums like You (1974) and Angels Egg (1973), this album contains a lot of instrumentals with jazz rock overtones. In fact, the musical direction had changed quite a bit - the emphasis had shifted to from trippy "Pot-head Pixies", "Octave Doctors" and the like to virtuosic jazz rock. This is however, extremely interesting and "weird" sounding jazz rock and is not to be confused with the music of Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever. The music of Gong was still quite distinctive even during this transitional period.
All in all this is a good album that shows the band moving in the direction of full blown jazz rock that they would adopt on albums like Gazeuse (1976) and Expresso II (1977). However, there are shades of the Daevid Allen period of Gong here and there, which makes this a pretty enjoyable listen.
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