Gong's 1971 album, Camembert Electrique.
I've discussed Gong, the life and death of Daevid Allen, and his partner in life and music, Gilli Smyth, at length in the article "Rejoice! I'm Dead!... Gong, the Life and Death of Daevid and Gilli."
This is their second album, a seminal one for psychedelic rock and space rock, a work both chaotic and brilliant, packed with the nonsense and spacey sounds that would define the band's sound. It's also the group's first "real" album, of great historical importance for the characteristically mad lyrics. It's a masterpiece of progressive rock characterized by a creative anarchy that blends psychedelia, jazz, and surreal humor.
As is well known, their official debut was with 1969's Magick Brother, but Camembert Electrique marks Gong's departure from the "Radio Gnome" mythology. It was on this album that Daevid Allen formally introduced Gong's narrative universe. The concepts of Radio Gnome, the Pot Head Pixies, and the imagery of the planet Gong appear for the first time. While the first album was a collection of more conventional psychedelic pop songs, Camembert Electrique is the band's philosophical and visual manifesto, laying the foundation for the celebrated Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy (Flying Teapot, Angel's Egg, and You).
To better understand the album's genesis, it's important to know that it was recorded at the Château d'Hérouville (Strawberry Studios) in France. Following Daevid Allen's esoteric philosophy, the recording sessions took place exclusively during the full moon phases of May, June, and September 1971.
Gong's real explosion in popularity, however, came later, in 1974, when Richard Branson obtained the license for the newly formed Virgin Records in the United Kingdom. To promote the band, Virgin sold it for just 59 pence, the same price as a 45 rpm single. Thanks to its ridiculously low price, the album sold thousands of copies, making Gong a national cult phenomenon. However, due to the promotional price, the album was denied official entry into the British sales charts at the time.
This album solidified Gong's classic lineup, featuring Daevid Allen ("Bert Camembert"), Gilli Smyth ("Shakti Yoni"), Didier Malherbe ("Bloomdido Bad De Grasse"), Christian Tritsch, and Pip Pyle.
The album represents Gong's ideological and spiritual manifesto, blending Dadaist humor, hippie mysticism, and psychedelic science fiction. It introduces for the first time the cosmogony created by Daevid Allen, through a distorted voice simulating radio transmissions from "Planet Gong," a place of pure consciousness and creativity inhabited by the Pot Head Pixies, fairy beings who act as messengers between Earth and Planet Gong via telepathic and radio frequencies.
Each musician adopts a mythological pseudonym (e.g., Daevid Allen is "Bert Camembert," Gilli Smyth is "Shakti Yoni"), transforming the band into an intergalactic commune. The title itself is a surreal play on words:
Camembert, a reference to the famous French cheese, a symbol of the group's life in France, is "electrified" to represent the fusion of nature and acid technology.
In the final groove of the vinyl (locked groove), electronic sounds create a continuous sound that symbolizes the infinity and continuity of the cosmic message.
The style of this album defines the Space Rock genre, a splendid fusion of avant-garde experimentation with jazz and hippie irony. Daevid Allen's glissando guitar is splendid, with its floating, cosmic atmospheres, Didier Malherbe's saxophone and flute, and Pip Pyle's drums, with complex jazz-rock structures and frenetic improvisations.
Gilli Smyth's "Space Whispers" appear, a unique element in the rock scene of the time.
The album alternates structured songs with bizarre sonic moments and spoken interludes with deep bass lines and pressing rhythms.
- Radio Gnome is a very short intro with distorted vocals that simulates a radio broadcast from the planet Gong.
- You Can't Kill Me is a song with jazz-rock influences and driving guitar riffs, one of the heaviest tracks featuring Didier Malherbe's splendid sax.
- I've Bin Stone Before / Mister Long Shanks / O Mother is a medley of abstract psychedelia and acoustic and vocal delirium.
- I Am Your Fantasy is a song dominated by Gilli Smyth's "space whispers," using her voice as a tool to create dreamy atmospheres.
- Dynamite / I Am Your Animal is a song of pure sonic chaos, experimental rock and noise, featuring Daevid Allen's intense vocals.
- "Wet Cheese Delirium" is a short, nonsensical spoken word interlude in true Dada style.
- "Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen's Heads" is a satirical and anarchic fragment lasting a few seconds.
- "Fohat Digs Holes in Space" is one of the album's most beautiful tracks, and one of the most beautiful pieces of space rock, a jam that introduces Allen's glissando guitar over a hypnotic bass line.
- "And You Tried So Hard" straddles the line between folk-rock ballad and progressive rock, with a spectacular guitar line.
- "Tropical Fish / Selene" is a very complex, jazzy track.
- "Gnome The Second" is the final radio announcement...
The artwork was designed by Daevid Allen himself under the pseudonym Dingo Virgin. It's a mix of surreal doodles, comics, and hippie symbolism, illustrations depicting various bizarre elements related to the band's mythology, including a caricature of Daevid Allen wearing a long robe with cheese fat ("99% fat") printed on it and a speech bubble with the words "cheez pleez" (cheese please), small images representing rural hippie life, a heart, the Ohm symbol, and a radio picking up "Radio Gnome."
The classic Gong characters with wizard hats topped with a propeller (the Pot Head Pixies) appear.
The reissues include color photographs of the band taken in the gardens of Château d'Hérouville, where the album was recorded. In one of them, drummer Pip Pyle is seen wearing stockings and suspenders.
Camembert Electrique wasn't just an album, but the prototype for an entire lifestyle and musical genre, the codification of Space Rock. Along with contemporary works by Hawkwind and Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett era), it established the canons of Space Rock through its use of glissando guitar and VCS3 synthesizers.
An album closely tied to the Canterbury scene, with its Dadaist madness and anarchy that balanced the jazzy, serious approach of bands like Soft Machine and Nucleus, influencing later groups like Ozric Tentacles.
The album also bears witness to a collective way of experiencing music. The members of Gong lived together, recorded according to the lunar cycles, and rejected the hierarchies and mechanisms of commercial recording, a spirit of radical independence that inspired the DIY (Do It Yourself) ethic that would be found years later in punk and alternative rock.
Immense Record. A Must-Have
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Tracklist
1. Radio Gnome Prediction (0:27)
2. You Can't Kill Me (6:18)
3. I've Bin Stone Before (2:36)
4. Mister Long Shanks/O Mother/I Am Your Fantasy (5:57)
5. Dynamite/I Am Your Animal (4:32)
6. Wet Cheese Delirium (0:31)
7. Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen's Heads (0:12)
8. Fohat Digs Holes In Space (6:22)
9. And You Tried So Hard (4:38)
10. Tropical Fish/Selene (7:36)
11. Gnome The Second (0:27)
Duration 39:36
LineUp
- Daevid Allen ("Bert Camembert") - vocals, guitars, bass (9)
- Gilli Smyth ("Shakti Yoni") - vocals and vocals (spacey whispers)
- Didier Malherbe ("Bloomdido Bad De Grass") - tenor saxophone, flute
- Christian Tritsch ("Capitano di Sottomarino") - bass, lead guitar (9)
- Pip Pyle - drums, percussion
With:
- Edouard Louise ("Eddy Louiss") - Hammond organ and piano (3)
- Constantin Simonovitch - piano (phased) (5)
.jpeg "You by Gong")