Customer Reviews

Shamal

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Shamal is close to my favorite Gong records. Daevid had begged off the band completely and Steve plays on just two songs. The band masterfully begins to develop as a fusion unit. Wingful Of Eyes is a masterpiece in commercial fusion and flows fresh even today! Didier Malherbe executes some Bamboo flute solos on a lot of the record that are truly mystifying. Patrice Lemoine's keyboards are gracefully understated. Mireille Bauer brings the renowned vibes sound we associate the band with to a fuller fruition. It is a wonderful piece of prog rock art with a jazzy funky edge. Yet it is still spacey in the Gong tradition. Pierre Moerlen starts to take over but he hasn't completely done so on this record. His percussion is stupendous and yes, they were trying for some commercial sucess. Heck the legacies of the band had either split or sat in for a session or two. Fusion purist do not like this record because it is not instramental. The space cadets don't like it because it is not spacey enough. In is right inbetween! Perfect spin!

"Shamal" is an important transitional album in Gong's convoluted life-span. Founder Daevid Allen just had departed and Steve Hillage (who is only listed as a guest musician here) strove for a solo career after having commercial success with his first solo effort "Fish rising". Finally, Gong became the vehicle of Pierre Moerlen, who led the band into jazz-rock fields with 1976's "Gazeuse!". Although "Shamal" is produced by Nick Mason, the music bears very little resemblance to Pink Floyd. The sound is also quite a step from Gong's preceding, legendary "Radio Gnome Trilogy". The songs are shorter, better structured and more tuneful, coming up with jazzy bass lines, croaky saxophones, and pearling vibraphones. I particularly enjoy Mike Howlett's hesitant talk-singing on "Wingful of eyes", the beautiful, both funny and melancholic "Mandrake", and the Eastern flavor of "Bombouji". "Shamal" is not one of my favorite Gong albums (these are "Camembert electrique", "Downwind", "Shapeshifter", and the remix collection "You remixed"), but it is one of Gong's most accessible and well-thought efforts.

I was alway mystified about this album. It was produced by Pink Floyd's drummer, and sold well in Europe but is relatively unknown in the U.S. It is a superb fusion of excellent winds (flute, sax) and percussion (marimba, vibes, drums) overlayed with great '70's synthesizer, moody lyrics and space guitar.

To my ear, many early 70s albums by British prog groups (for instance, Caravan, Robert Wyatt, Hatfield & the North) sound tainted by quirky vocals. Gong, the anglo-French consortium, caught this foot-in-mouth disease right from the start. The earlier CAMEMBERT ELECTRIQUE has enough space pixies to last you a lifetime. Steve Hillage, with Miquette Giraudy, still had the bug when he recorded the solo L.

Gong's creator, Daevid Allen, left the band in 75 -- he maintained he had been prevented from appearing on stage one night by a 'force field' of uncertain origin.

This 1975 outing by Gong-sans-Allen was a revelation. A band that I'd written off as both lunatics and cheap -- it had been Richard Branson's idea to sell CAMEMBERT ELECTRIQUE for just 69p (around ...) -- suddenly demanded to be taken very seriously indeed. A very clean production (for the time) by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason created a very disciplined, democratic performance by the band.

This album deserves to be much better known than it is. It's certainly in my top 50. My brother prefers the successor, GAZEUSE!, which has fewer vocals, and, having just read and been entranced by some of the amazon reviews of that album, I may well go buy that one.

It's 1975 folks...the acid has worn off, my older brothers have cut their hair and gone to grad school, and Gong has released Shamal. Life progresses. I liked Shamal in `75; I still do after more years than I'd like to admit, and it still intrigues and annoys me as it did way back when. This is a pretty good album, but what is it with the stupid lyrics? Didn't they go away in the 60s? The instrumentals Bambooji and Mandrake are absolute works of art (Mandrake still makes me very sad). The transition from Bambooji to instrumental Cat in Clark's Shoes is rough, but when originally released on vinyl, there was a pause as you flipped the record over. Shamal is a great piece of music with unnecessary but mostly ignorable vocals.

Changing hats to audiophile jerk, this is a very well recorded studio album with really unique (translate: odd) mixing and use of compression. The electric guitar crescendo on Bambooji is never really allowed to take hold, yet the wooden flute just about knocks you over backwards. Having someone shouting lyrics so quietly you can't understand them in Shamal is kindof interesting once, but I wish they would go away.

If only they had restricted the (non lyrical) vocals to Bambooji, this would be a great album.

This 1975 album found the band without founding member Daevid Allen and exploring the mallet heavy jazz rock that characterized the Pierre Moerlen fronted version of the band. Although some folks do not like this album too much, I actually think that musically it is in pretty good form. Come to think of it, the tunes consist of a nice mixture of the spacey, heavy prog of 1971-1974 and the jazz rock of 1976-1977. Nick Mason (Pink Floyd drummer) produced the album and it sounds excellent.

The lineup at this point included a few holdovers from the Daevid Allen era Gong and some new members including: Mike Howlett (bass guitar, vocals); Didier "Bloom" Malherbe (Tenor and soprano saxophones, C and G flutes, bamboo flutes, and gongs); the superb Pierre Moerlen (drums, vibraphone, tubular bells); Miquette Giraudy (vocals on Bambooji); Mireille Bauer (marimba, glockenspiel, xylophone, assorted percussion and gongs); Steve Hillage (acoustic and electric guitars on Bambooji and Wingful of Eyes only); and Patrice Lemoine (electric and acoustic piano, mini moog synthesizer, and Hammond organ). Patrice was an active member of the French prog scene and played with members of the great French band Atoll and the band Arc amongst others. Although Patrice is a great player, I really miss the spacey synthesizers of Tim Blake. All of the musicians from the Shamal lineup are excellent and it was clear that although a major upheaval in personnel had occurred, the playing did not suffer one bit.

The six tracks on the album range in length from 3'03" to 9'54" and consist of a mixture of tunes with vocals and instrumentals. Unfortunately, I really do not think vocals were Mike's strong suit although they do not bother me too much. Although there are a few moments that hearken back to the heavy space prog of albums like You (1974) and Angels Egg (1973), this album contains a lot of instrumentals with jazz rock overtones. In fact, the musical direction had changed quite a bit - the emphasis had shifted to from trippy "Pot-head Pixies", "Octave Doctors" and the like to virtuosic jazz rock. This is however, extremely interesting and "weird" sounding jazz rock and is not to be confused with the music of Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever. The music of Gong was still quite distinctive even during this transitional period.

All in all this is a good album that shows the band moving in the direction of full blown jazz rock that they would adopt on albums like Gazeuse (1976) and Expresso II (1977). However, there are shades of the Daevid Allen period of Gong here and there, which makes this a pretty enjoyable listen.

1974's You had showed Gong at their peak, closing off the Radio Gnome trilogy with what had to be their finest album. Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth, and Tim Blake had all left the band after that album. Steve Hillage got to work on his first solo album, Fish Rising (which basically featured all the Gong members, plus Dave Stewart and Lindsay Cooper, minus of course, Allen). That left Gong with Didier Malherbe, Pierre Moerlen, Mike Howlett, and Mireille Bauer. Vocal duties were now handled by Howlett, and they decided to add a Frenchman by the name of Patrice Lemoine to handle the keyboards. Lemoine was obviously a much more conventional keyboardist than Tim Blake, so no fancy VCS-3 synth bubbles and spacy Moog leads. Instead he went for a Fender Rhodes electric piano and a Mini Moog played more in the fusion manner. Without Daevid Allen anymore, it's no surprise that stories of the Planet Gong and Pot Head Pixies were absent, but the lyrics often still remained quirky, especially "Wingful of Eye". Some of the songs on this album have a rather strong ethnic bent to them, especially "Bambooji". "Chandra" shows the band at their more fusion-oriented side. "Cat in Clark's Shoe" is a rather quirky number, gets a little cheesy in places, especially when you have an Argentine by the name of Jorge Pinchevesky provide some violin. He was a guest on the album and apparently a fixture in Argentina's music scene. Steve Hillage is now pretty much credited as a guest on this album, as he'd be going solo full time after this album. Shamal shows that Gong was still able to make some great music without the presence of the Pot Head Pixie crew. Unfortunately, for me, I felt the band moved to more conventional fusion after this album that didn't do much for me. But for Shamal, it's still another recommended album if you like Gong, although of course, I prefer You.

Produced by Nick Mason, this album is pretty good. Of course, it's not a masterpiece such "Angel's Egg" or "Camembert Electrique", but it's enjoyable. The highlights are "Bombooji" (have a nice trip to Middle East with Didier Malherbe by your side!) and "Cat in the Clark's Shoes".

This is when the (temporary) rot began to set in. Daevid Allen took himself, and his creativity with him. And technically proficient players were left to be technically proficient. That profiency does not extend to Mike Howlett's feeble attempt at singing. It's hard to listen to his singing on track 1 without cringing. You can hear his lack of confidence with the singing as he wavers tremulously around the required pitches. And the lyrics are mystical/new-agey without any hint of humour. That being said, it's still worth buying because the great sax player Malherbe is still with them at this point, and his two compositions, especially "Cat in Clark's Shoes", are as good, and as melodic as the Allen day's stuff. They then went on to make some dreadful albums when Monsieur Malherbe called it a day to. Thankfully, all the creative personell got back together again in the 90's and are now making great albums again. (Of course, this opinion is meant for the Gong fans that like the early Daevid Allen Gong. If you're a fan of the Moerlen/Holdsworth etc Gong please don't take any offence from my comments.)

I actually wanted to hear this album a long time ago and haven't had the chance until tonight. I really like what I'm hearing but of course, it's very different compared to the earlier Gong albums. This is more atmospheric and less concerned with songwriting. There are some exceptions though.

"Wingful of Eyes" has some Brian Eno-like vocals that are quite good. The flutes serve mostly as background music, similar to shopping for plants and hearing flutes over the radio. Yeah that's not very realistic but whatever. Moving along!

"Bombooji" has an Asian vibe that is quite impressive. There's some guitar soloing in this song that reminds me of the Chicago classic "25 or 6 to 4". I mean, the guitarist really tears it up for a couple minutes! And the title song... WOW. It's like a logical continuation of the space jazz approach from the You album and "Isle of Everywhere" and probably just as good. It's mostly about that saxophone jam, but there's some vocals in the background that remind me a little bit of Fleetwood Mac. Other than those few moments Fleetwood Mac and Gong are VERY different bands, so don't think I'm really comparing the two here. No way baby!

I love how a typical Gong album feels so drugged out, and yet, there's a certain shine or glittery spark to the entire album. What a bizarre band. But a band that can certainly make an interesting album. Worth owning.