Gazeuse [CD]

This album represented a new phase in the evolution of Gong, one which is much maligned and extremeley under-rated. Pierre Moerlen became the dominant musical force in the band from this album on, although his role as a composer was prominent in the previous album 'Shamal'. From this point the band became primarily a jazz-rock fusion group, while still retaining Gong's unique groove and diversity of european and oriental influences.

The first track Expresso is a great example of the virtuoisity of the players involved. Pierre Moerlen's drumming is powerful and free flowing. The band as a unit are immensely tight. Benoit Moerlen, surely an unsung hero of the jazz-rock world shines wonderfully throughout on tuned percussion instruments.

All the tracks are excellent - but there is a moment during 'Esnuria' where the harmony, groove and precision of the group reaches a point of musical ecstacy.

Alan Holdsworth puts in an impressive performance also - the free-flowing circular harmonies, intricate melody lines and funky beats providing the perfect platform for his complex improvisation.

It is a very difficult thing to describe the sound of this band in words. They were unique. They utilised musical sounds and textures in a way that nobody else has.

'Gazeuse' is really the first album of Pierre Moerlen's Gong, who rightly stand shoulder to shoulder with other more celebrated Jazz rock greats - Weather Report, Soft Machine and Return to Forever. There is no image or gimmick to attract people to this, just amazing, interesting, vibrant music, music for music's sake.

Awesome!!

If you like this you would also do well to check out the recent music by Gongzilla which is in a very similar vein and contains many of the same musicians including the percussive genius Benoit Moerlen.

Having not liked anything I'd heard of this band hitherto, including even the much vaunted Shamal, I bought this not long after its original release in 1976 and it's continued to grow on me ever since. Nowadays, I seem to be enjoying it more than ever ~ in part due to the benefits of a better hi-fi system than I had the means to acquire back then. Apart from anything else, it's a great recording.

As other reviewers have noted, Gazeuse! has a strongly jazzy yet also, in places, heavy rock flavour. But it's also smooth with it, with no searing electric guitar or wailing saxophone and, significantly, like Second Wind, it's also purely instrumental which, for a jazz album is in my book a major plus. Unlike all the early Gong albums I ever got a chance to sample, this one has good strong melodies ~ not exactly ballads that you'd play whilst dancing with your sweetheart, you understand, but certainly tunes with which you can hum along.

Led by drummer/percussionist Pierre Moerlen with a first rate support crew, this was Gong at the height of their musical powers. Though I've sampled several subsequent Gong albums in search of another of comparable calibre, the only one I've ever rated nearly as highly is the now rare and expensive Second Wind from 1988. Pentanine sounded promisingly tuneful and is also all instrumental but when I got it, it failed to live up to expectations.

Moerlen's drumming isn't just fluent and assured, but the more closely you listen to it, the more you realise just how unique and uniquely accomplished it is. I have no other album with drumming like that to be found here. Accompanying Mr Moelen are excellent fretless bass playing from Francis Moze, who also plays acoustic and electric piano on the closing track, Allan Holdsworth on all manner of guitars (extremely well, even though his solo albums, such as I've heard, all seemed pretty ghastly) and Didier Malherbe on saxes and flute. Everybody else plays percussion of one sort or another, notably vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, toms, congas, African bell gong, cuica (see WikiPedia), triangle, maracas, talking drums and temple blocks, though these by no means overwhelm the rest of what's going on. It just all hangs together brilliantly well ~ producer Dennis Mackay and engineer Stephen Taylor both did an excellent job at the Manor Studios in Oxfordshire.

The best tracks, it has to be said, are those written by Pierre Moerlen, though the rest of the album is strong as well. There's also a great little drum solo on Part 2 of Percolations, crisp and fluid rather than crash, bang, wallop (if you want the very best ever one of those, check out Chicken Shack's hard blues rock Imagination Lady from 1971). In fact, Percolations is very interesting for being almost entirely percussion based (drum kit and a broad array of tuned percussion instruments ~ see above). Apart from just a bit of flute and sax in the opening passage to help set the scene for what follows, there are no other instruments at all, but it's so very well done that it takes a while to realise it. And Esnuria, the best track of all, really motors to a brilliant climax. The muse was certainly with Mr Moerlen when he wrote that one.

This really is an excellent and classic album in every department and well worth seeking out. With the benefit of skilled digital remastering, it might be even better, albeit only slightly. The only other (instrumental) album in my collection from 1976 (which was a pretty rough time for the popular music scene, what with the demise of prog rock and the emergence of New Wave) that still, after all these years, exudes as much power and freshness as Gazeuse! is Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene. As a partnering album from the same era, you could do worse than check out Solution's Cordon Bleu from 1975, even though that one does have a few (inoffensive) vocal tracks on it and seems now to be commanding rather steep prices. That aside, Gazeuse is worthy of the highest recommendation and, IMHO, quite the best album Gong ever recorded.

The other 2 reviews are spot on. This is a really enjoyable album that you cant categorise. Beautiful percussion & as always incredible guitar playing from AH.
In the 70's I regularly went to see the original hippy lineups of Gong who were mad, funny & spaced out, but when they played serious they were great musicians. This jazzy lineup was a major transformation (more in seriousness than style), and Pierre Moerlens Gong became one of my favourites, so much so that I still listen to the albums regularly as I still find them different, refreshing and exciting