Gong - Angels Egg (18 tracks) +Album Reviews

Excellent remaster

kireviewer | Sunnyvale, Ca United States | 07/06/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like most of Gong's albums, this has been released on CD a number of times. The CD's have varying sound quality. They weren't horrible, but they weren't great. This remaster has excellent, beautiful sound. It really brings out the atmosphere of the music.

The original album was 45 minutes long. 15 minutes of extra tracks have been added, bringing the CD to just under 60 minutes. I don't think that any of the bonus tracks are all that great. They aren't bad, they just don't make it worth buying this if you already have an older copy.

This remaster has a nice 8 page booklet, containing the lyrics and all the info on Gong and the Pot Head Pixies. The only thing missing is the blue artwork that was on the inside of the gatefold of the original LP cover.

This is just another great Gong album. It has some of the spaciest and wildest music of any of the Gong albums. It also has a number of great songs. While it is very spacy, it is also very coherent and holds together well. The only downside is that there are a few short silly songs.

This album is as good as You, but somewhat different. There are more songs, and they are a bit shorter than what is on You.

Gong released 3 albums in the 1970's dealing with Radio Gnome Invisible and the Pothead Pixies (Flying Teapot, Angel's Egg and You). In all, Gong released 5 to 7 albums in the 1970's (depending on how you are counting) before splintering. The leader of the band, Daevid Allen left, and the remainder became a jazz fusion band.

Throught the eighties, Allen would reform the space version of Gong, and the jazz version got renamed Pierrie Moerlen's Gong. The jazz band disbanded in the eighties.

Allen reformed Gong permanently in the late nineties, and the band has put out a number of studio and live albums. They are all very good. The last three studio albums have carried on the story of the Pot Head Pixies."

I Have Seen The Way, and it is is OILY!!!

D. Gerry | Los Angeles, CA United States | 07/07/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A TON of fun - superbly executed and clearly remastered sounds!!

This is like early Pink Floyd - if Sid had remained in the group!

This is like King Crimson WITHOUT the technical chip on Fripp's shoulder - (...must...play....faster....)

This is like Zappa on mescalin!

This is post-Floyd psychedelia of a 'very high' calibre ;-)"

Very well played space rock with a sense of humor

Jeffrey J.Park | Massachusetts, USA | 04/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This excellent 1973 release by Gong was the second installment in the Radio Gnome Trilogy. The lineup on this album is absolutely classic Gong and includes Tim Blake (VCS3 and mini-moog synthesizers); Pierre Moerlen (drums); Mike Howlett (bass); Daevid Allen (guitar, vocals); Didier Maherbe (woodwinds); Steve Hillage (guitar); and Gilli Smyth (space whisper, vocals). A great deal of the music on Angel's Egg is very spacey, which is driven largely by Tim Blake's atmospheric synthesizer work, along with Gilli Smyth's cosmic and heavily-echoed "space whisper". On the other side of the coin however, is some seriously virtuosic drumming by Pierre Moerlen and alternately spacey and heavy guitar work by Steve Hillage. Bassist Mike Howlett is no slouch either and his thunderous playing really drives everything along. As a general rule, this band was always comprised of superb musicians and their ability to swing from jazz rock, to space rock, to spacey free-form and back again always impressed me. In addition to virtuosity, this music exhibits the quintessentially whimsical Canterburian sense of humor, which is expressed through the surreal and "dadaist" lyrics of Daevid Allen. EMI did a great job of remastering this album, and the 14 page booklet features liner notes that "explain" the premise underlying the Radio Gnome Trilogy (up through Part II at least), and discusses topics including the Planet Gong; Master of the Spheres; Octave Doctors; Pot Head Pixies and the like. In addition to the original album, there are five bonus tracks including a single version of Other side of the Sky, the outtake Ooby-Scooby Doomsday or the D-Day DJ's got the DDT Blues, a vocal mix of Love is How Y Make It, and an early version of Eat that Phone Book Coda. Overall the bonus tracks are OK, and with the exception of the excellent Ooby-Scooby, do not add too much to the original album. Fortunately, EMI did not use copy control technology on this album, so playback problems should not be an issue. This album is very highly recommended along with Magick Brother (1970); Camembert Electrique (1971); Flying Teapot (RGI Pt. 1) (1973); and You (RGI Pt. 3)(1974)."

Angel's Egg Relaid

Mikkel McDow | California | 10/29/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First let me say, this is one of my favorite albums in the world. Second, this is one of the best remastering jobs I've ever heard. The high end is clear and sharp, the low end is tight and punchy, and there is no annoying 'bump' in the high mids that mars so many progressive rock remasters. Hand it to the dutch for using their ears instead of their meters and dials. If you remember the old Virgin vinyl lp, then you know how good this album could sound. If you owned the Charly CD, you know how bad it could sound. The follow-up release, You, has also been remastered and it, too, sounds better than the lp. Now when will they get to The Flying Teapot. My old Charly CD never sounded so bad.

Hats off also for the four bonus songs. Two of them are single edits. The Other Side Of The Sky, I believe, was the French b-side to I Never Glid Befoa, but I could be wrong. Ooby Scooby Doomsday used to be on the vinyl Gong Live etc. I've heard it said this song is a waste of time. I think it's one of the great lost Gong songs and it deserves to be in any comprehensive library of the band's recordings. Another is Blues For Findlay from the soundtrack to Continental Circus, which was made around the time of Camembert Electrique. I wish we could get that on CD again."

Excellent remaster of a classic psych/whimsey album

jaman57 | Toms River, NJ USA | 03/08/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As I wrote in my review of the Japanese remaster of "Flying Teapot", for those who have no idea what the band is about, it is a hippy/new age story with a great deal of Australian whimsey, set to a sound that is definitely psychedelic, but with true musical ability - which really starts to shine on this album, and culminates on the last part of the "Radio Gnome" trilogy, "You".

The remaster is excellent - while the age of the recording allows a bit of background tape hiss to be audible at the very soft beginning of the first track, that is a minor point. The sound is very clear and crisp - really better than I expected from a recording of this era.

As for the music, here we find the focus shifting from the Daevid Allen-dominated quirkiness of "Flying Teapot" and the earlier Gong albums to progressive space-rock with a jazz tinge. Guitarist Steve Hillage begins to step forward as the player and writer who would so greatly influence an entire generation of neo-psych bands from Ozric Tentacles to Porcupine Tree (their early work, not the more metal sound of the last several albums) and countless others. Tim Blake's synthesizers bubble and phase with an effectiveness that the German artists of the era (e.g. Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream) only wish they could accomplish. But it's the sax and flute of Didier Malherbe that really make the sound unique, adding the afore-mentioned jazzish tone and sensibility (with some help from drummer Pierre Moerlen and percussionist Mirielle Bauer). Allen and poetess/space whisperer Gilli Smyth still add their indiosyncratic words and sounds (and whatever one thinks of Allen's ditties, his glissando guitar is simply the best space instrument ever), but no longer overwhelm the creativity of the rest of the band.

I still rate this the second best of the Gong albums - "You" to me is where they reached their peak, and so to "make room" as it were for that truly 5-star album, I really would probably give this four and a half stars. Some might find the whimsical bits still a bit distracting. But where this album hits its peak (the space/rock/jazz of the opening "Other Side of the Sky", the poignancy of emotional lyrical duality and French cafe sound of "Prostitute Poem", the infectious Malherbe-dominated pop-with-a-brain-and-soul of "Oily Way", the perfect mixture of hippy dream lyrics and jazz marimba of "Love Is How You Make It", the soaring Hillage guitar that hints of things to come of "I Never Glid Before", and the rollicking Malherbe coda "Eat That Phone Book") there is a freshness and vision that sets it apart from anything else in the psychedelic music (in the general sense) universe. Highly recommended."

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