Zero To Infinity

Album review

Australia-born spacehead Daevid Allen began appearing on recordings by progressive/psychedelic/art rock pioneers Soft Machine and Gong in the late '60s and early '70s. Allen and the other members of his proto-hippie aggregation Gong quickly established themselves as a rather wacky alternative to groups of England's so-called Canterbury music scene, such as the Softs as well as Caravan, Hatfield and the North, and National Health. Roughly 30 years later in the year 2000, the comparatively serious-minded Canterbury outfits were either long gone or hanging on by a thread, but Gong was back in action with Zero to Infinity, one of the strongest releases ever by the Daevid Allen version of the band. (The fusiony Gong ensemble led by drummer Pierre Moerlen during the late '70s featured a number of the same players but was quite a different animal.) Zero to Infinity was part five of Gong's "Radio Gnome" saga, a whimsical tale about the adventures of protagonist Zero the Hero and the many cosmic characters he encounters on mystical journeys through space and time. As in previous Gong efforts, some of the best stuff happens when the band stretches out and jams. In "The Invisible Temple," a midtempo modal space-funk vamp clocking in at over 11 minutes, vocalist Gilli Smyth's vivid imagery of myriad life forms ascending through "vast concentric rings" intertwines with nice solos from alto saxophonist Didier Malherbe, guitarist Allen, and especially new tenor saxophonist Theo Travis. Originally penned in 1969 and appearing on Allen's comparatively low-key Good Morning! album in 1976, "Wise Man in Your Heart" is a wistful ballad embedded with old-fashioned hippie idealism. Featuring one of Allen's most earnestly delivered and affecting vocal performances, "Wise Man" derives its floating quality in part from Mike Howlett's repeating bassline that punctuates the tune in an off-meter cycle. Like most of Zero to Infinity, the song is gorgeously produced, a bit slick but with the same warm qualities that can be found, for example, in the production work of Daniel Lanois with Peter Gabriel or Brian Eno. While Zero to Infinity works most of the time, it is not without the occasional clunker, such as "Bodilingus," a musical exploration of the aging Allen's body parts set to a 1970s-style disco arrangement. Still, Gong were in fine form throughout most of the album's journey. Thirty years on, and Daevid Allen still managed to walk a pop music tightrope, balancing the artful and the absurd while remaining true to his vision of music as a spiritually liberating force. Zero to Infinity found the Divided Alien and his fellow Gong travelers persisting with their optimistic message from the 1960s, happily out of sync with the prevailing currents of more cynical times.

© Dave Lynch /TiVo