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BIZARRE: Daevid allen | Mind Blowing Facts

“Music, art, death, time – they’re all part of the same thing. I can’t articulate it. I’m just some stoned goofball with a guitar”: How Gong became more Gong than ever with latest album Bright Spirit

The most stable line-up in the band’s six-decade history have completed their first trilogy, with new spiritual insight and an old but well-loved guitar style borrowed from Syd Barrett

Louder

“I used Steven Wilson’s Mellotron in exchange for me guesting at his London Palladium show!”: Prog pioneers Soft Machine spared no effort on their new album, then took a risk by calling it Thirteen

Theo Travis on tempting fate, revisiting a tradition, being the best-tempered line-up since the beginning in 1966, and adding a posthumous appearance by co-founder Daevid Allen

Louder

"There's no denying that Gong has changed me." Kavus Torabi on the new adventures of psychedelic rock, jazz, space-rock and more collective Gong

Since being handed the role of Gong gatekeeper by late founder Daevid Allen, Kavus Torabi has guided the band through a trilogy of albums

Louder

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“There’s no such thing as coincidence. It’s about being in a flow state. Joining the band I tripped to as a teenager… it all makes sense”: Gong may have lost some humour and older songs, but Kavus Torabi says they’re still supernatural

Daevid Allen’s appointed replacement on keeping the spirituality alive without becoming overwhelmed, the respectful use of acid, and the late band leader’s similarity to Cardiacs’ Tim Smith

Louder

“The sound universe that Soft Machine opened before me was almost unfathomable. It was a revelation, a musical epiphany”: Meet the Canterbury scene’s international next generation

The seeds of The Wilde Flowers have taken root all around the world. Here are just a handful of 21st-century musicians taking inspiration from the 60s and 70s

Louder

"I felt out of place. That group didn't have much musical merit and I thought it was crap": The oddball career of Kevin Ayers, quintessential English songwriter

Kevin Ayers co-founded Soft Machine, influenced Bowie, shared acid trips and girlfriends with Hendrix, and knew Syd Barrett better than most

Louder

“A work of towering vitality, a raised fist and even a raised finger”: Gong’s 10th anniversary edition of I See You casts Daevid Allen’s final work in a new light

Subtle touches mark the full-circle moment when Allen – who still had plenty to say – put his band in the hands of Kavus Torabi, and the wheel moved on

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Daevid Allen's final album with Gong to be reissued

2014's I See You, Daevid Allen's swansong with Gong has been remixed and will be released in May

Louder

“The conservatism of what’s called progressive rock these days appals me”: The life and times of Steve Hillage, the maverick guitarist who helped shape the sound of prog

Steve Hillage was one of the architects of 70s prog

Louder

“Gong’s appeal? Not becoming too commercially successful”: Daevid Allen bade a grateful farewell with I See You – but he still believed in the future

Months before his death from cancer, he encapsulated his unique vision in a forward-looking album, then left others to continue his work

Louder

Mike Ratledge obituary

Composer and keyboard player who was a driving force behind the experimental prog-rock band Soft Machine

The Guardian - UK

“If I were you, I’d get a haircut and disappear”: When author William Burroughs gave Daevid Allen permission to call his band The Soft Machine

A key moment in the Canterbury band’s history came when the future Gong mastermind made contact with his former collaborator in 1966

Louder

"He was the backbone of Soft Machine." Founding member and keyboard player Mike Ratledge dead at 81

Soft Machine's longest-serving member Mike Ratledge, who also worked with Syd Barrett and Kevin Ayers, has died after a short illness

Louder

“I’d just fed the gerbils and was practicing how to play the saw when this head popped around the door and asked politely if I would like to join Caravan”: Inside the weird and wonderful world of The Canterbury Scene

Soft Machine, Caravan, Gong, Hatfield And The North - how a small town in England changed progressive music forever

Louder

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“Gong is the band you listen to when you smoke your first joint or drop your first acid trip at school”: The mind-bending story of cult psychedelic heroes Gong

Looking back on the career of psychedelic oddballs Gong, one of rock’s most eccentric bands

Louder

“Daevid Allen was always throwing a grenade into situations… Tim Smith was quite benign, although very driven. They both had the same sort of presence:” Kavus Torabi compares his late Gong and Cardiacs bandmates

Briefed to keep Gong going after Allen’s death, the new leader pursues the same aim with a different vision. How have the fans reacted?

Louder

“When we started, it wasn’t necessarily going to be a trilogy… I like the fact that each one is a bit different. To this day that’s the best band I’ve ever been in”: Steve Hillage on Gong’s Radio Gnome Invisible era

The guitarist most associated with Daevid Allen’s band believes they launched a second wave of psychedelia with their 70s albums Chocolate Teapot, Angel’s Egg and You

Louder

“Not just an amorphous stream of swirly pothead trance rock… In fact, this album feels more focused than its predecessor:” Gong’s Unending Ascending

With the late Daevid Allen’s blessing, Kavus Torabi continues the 54-year-old band’s mission to music’s outer reaches

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Louder

“The universe and self and the inside of ourselves is all the same thing, depending on which end you look down the telescope”: Gong continue a “loose trilogy” with Unending Ascending

Kavus Torabi explains the themes behind the band’s third album after the death of Daevid Allen

Louder

“My brother was into Yes but it didn’t speak to me. They knew too many chords!” He was a punk hero, while her dad was Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen was her babysitter. How Galen Ayers turned Paul Simonon onto prog

2023's unlikeliest duo discuss art as inspiration, Hendrix's guitar and the forthcoming Kevin Ayers’ reissues

Louder

“Pop music didn’t offer enough open space for improvisation… there was no way we were going to play a tune the same way twice”: How Soft Machine pioneered the Canterbury scene

By the time debut album The Soft Machine was released in 1968, they’d already split up - but its impact changed everything

Guitar World

Six-string psychonaut Kavus Torabi on the mythology of Gong, Hotel California moments with Steve Hillage and his epiphany with scales

Torabi plays in some of Britain’s most out-there bands, fronting Gong to playing with Steve Hillage and former snooker champion Steve Davis. We join him on the search for Utopia

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