GONG
I See You KSCOPE
Tenth-anniversary edition of a visionary rapscallion’s last stand.
It’s been a decade since Daevid Allen left us to take up a new cosmic address, and it’s technically been 11 years since this, Gong’s 13th studio album and his final recording on this earthly plane, was released, though the band never were ones to yield to the dictates of time. Invariably, figures of Allen’s stature have left their best material in the distant past, but I See You stands defiant as a work of towering vitality, a raised fist and even a raised finger on tracks like This Revolution – a denouement fitting for a man who occasionally went by the characteristically bonkers epithet Divided Alien Bert Camembert. Indeed, perhaps the nicest touch on this 10th-anniversary edition is the blackened circular border around the wheel of life of the cover, imitating Gong’s classic debut Camembert Electrique from 1971. That direct homage indicates that everything has come full circle, even if the wheel continues to roll without him (or the physical manifestation of him, at least).