Camembert Electrique - GONG***

Radio Gnome Prediction/You Can't Kill Me/I've Bin Stone Before/Mister Long Shanks/Dynamite I Am Your Animal/Wet Cheese Delirium/Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen's Heads/Fohat Digs Holes In Space/And You Tried So Hard/Tropical Fish Seline/Gnome The Second

Camembert Electrique was the follow up album from the psychedelic band Gong. It was recorded and released in France and did not become available on the UK market until a few years later.

“Although Cambembert Electrique isn't the Gong debut, it's undeniably the beginning of what most people consider the classic form of Gong - the one that concerns itself with Allen's hippie mystical and anti-establishment vision shrouded in mythology of teapots, pothead pixies and mythical planets, all displayed over some of the craziest jazz-influenced psychedelic music to be heard in the entire era.”

“This is an interesting transition album that feels like it has connections to the heavy psych of the 60s while branching out its tentacles into a new 70s space rock style garnished with all the zaniness and humour that the Canterbury scene was so famous for. This is a great example of how to combine the Canterbury whimsy with space rock, progressive heavy rock and healthy doses of anarchic psychedelia with totally original experimental elements.”

“On their second album Gong evolve significantly from their first, moving from whimsical folksy psychedelia to full-blown joyous space rock. The band is having immense amounts of fun, and that is the most important thing about making music. On top of this, they are also incredibly good at what they do, and what they are doing here had scarcely been done before. What I love about this album is the combination of playfulness and the seemingly perfect translation of idea to sound.”

“The crucial difference between most psychedelic groups and this album is that Gong contain virtuoso musicians who also know how to have fun, and how to incorporate traces of lots of different music of this world into a rock album. Their virtuosity is evinced by the fact that most of this music is intricately arranged.”

“Great psychedelic fun. Gong were a great whimsical childish band of the early 70s, singing about pixies and gnomes. Grand stuff, good musical arrangements, and quite trippy. A pretty stoned outing from Daevid Allen and gang of merry pranksters.”

“Gong's masterpiece and a prog classic. It's basically a collection of delirious, spaced-out acid rock jams, and you won't find a better collection of such music.”