''Angel's Egg'' is the fourth studio album by the

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. In ...

band

Gong A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs ...

, released on

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), Tom Newman. It ...

in December 1973. It was recorded using the Manor Mobile studio at Gong's communal home, Pavillon du Hay, Voisines, France, and mixed at The Manor, Oxfordshire, England. The album was produced by "Gong under the direction of

Giorgio Gomelsky Giorgio Sergio Alessando Gomelsky (28 February 1934 – 13 January 2016) was a filmmaker, impresario, music manager, songwriter (as Oscar Rasputin) and record producer. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Switzerland, and later lived in the Unit ...

". ''Angel's Egg'' is the second in Gong's ''Radio Gnome Invisible'' trilogy of albums, following '' Flying Teapot'' and preceding ''

You In Modern English, ''you'' is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers. History ''You'' comes from the Proto- ...

''. The trilogy forms a central part of the Gong mythology. The original album did not have an apostrophe in the title. The original vinyl edition came with a booklet containing an extensive explanation of the mythology, including lyrics, a glossary of terms, and profiles of characters in the story and band members. This edition also had a gatefold cover (omitted in later pressings), a plain inky blue innersleeve to match the gatefold and booklet, and had the original black and white Virgin label which was discontinued after 1973; it was one of the last albums to use the original label. Some copies had a sticker over top of the female nude in the moon on the cover. The CD version released by

, and later reissued on

Charly Records Charly Records is a British record label that specialises in reissued material. Among the labels whose original releases are reissued by Charly are Vee-Jay, Sun, Immediate, BYG, Tomato, and Fania. History Charly Records was founded in Fra ...

contains an extra track: "Ooby-Scooby Doomsday or The D-day DJs Got the D.D.T. Blues", that ends with a male voice choir glissando (questionably regarded by some as a parody on Pink Floyd's "Echoes"), starting with "Ahhhh" and ending with "Chooo", mimicking a sneeze. The track was originally released on the '' Live Etc.'' album but was excluded from the CD release (which reissued that double album as one disc), and included on this album instead.

Track listing

Unusual spellings are as listed on the cover of the original edition. Also, take note that in some CD editions, on the back cover, tracks 7 and 8 are numbered 7a and 7b so that tracks 9-15 have a unity less than the CD reader (included the bonus track that numbers 14 on the cover and 15 on the CD reader). The instrumental section at the end of "Sold to the Highest Buddha" is referred to as "6/8 sax" in the cover notes, and became a separate piece titled "6/8" on Gong Live Etc. "Selene" is a completely different song from one with the same title on an earlier Gong album, Camembert Electrique. Later CD editions add more bonus tracks, including demo vocal versions with altered mixing.

Charts

Personnel

Note: Pseudonyms and absurd instrument names selected by Daevid Allen are used on the album credits; real names are used in composer credits, and are shown in brackets. * Bloomdido Bad De Grasse (

Didier Malherbe Didier Malherbe (born January 22, 1943 in Paris), is a French jazz, rock and world music musician, known as a member of the bands Gong and Hadouk, as well as a poet. His first instrument was a saxophone, but he also plays flutes, alto clarin ...

) – ten/sop sax, floot, bi-focal vocal * Shakti Yoni (

Gilli Smyth Gillian Mary Smyth (1 June 1933 – 22 August 2016) was an English musician who performed with the bands Gong, Mother Gong, and Planet Gong and released several solo albums and albums in collaboration with other members of Gong. In Gong, she ...

) – space whisper, loin cackle * T. Being esq. (

Mike Howlett Michael John Gilmour Howlett (born 27 April 1950) is a record producer and teacher based in the United Kingdom and Australia. Career In the late 1960s, Howlett was the bassist in Sydney pop band the Affair, which included vocalist Kerrie Bidde ...

, spelled Howlitt on composer credits) – basso profundo * Sub. Capt. Hillage ( Steve Hillage) – lewd guitar * Hi T. Moonweed (the favourite) (

Tim Blake Timothy Blake (born 6 February 1952, in Shepherd's Bush, London) is a keyboardist, synthesist, vocalist, and composer working with Gong, Hawkwind and his Synthesizer and Light performances as Crystal Machine, with the French Light Artist Patr ...

) – Cynthia "size a", lady voce * Pierre de Strasbourg (

Pierre Moerlen Pierre Moerlen (23 October 1952, Colmar, Haut-Rhin – 3 May 2005, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, near Strasbourg) was a French drummer and percussionist, best known for his work with Gong and Mike Oldfield and as Pierre Moerlen's Gong. Biography Pi ...

, spelled Moerlin on composer credits) – bread & batteur drums, vibes,

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

* Mirielle de Strasbourg ( Mireille Bauer) – glockenspiel * Dingo Virgin (

Daevid Allen Christopher David Allen (13 January 1938 – 13 March 2015), known professionally as Daevid Allen, sometimes credited as Divided Alien, was an Australian musician. He was co-founder of the psychedelic rock groups Soft Machine (in the UK, 1966) ...

) – local vocals, aluminium croon, glissando guitar

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Angel's Egg (Album) 1973 albums Concept albums Gong (band) albums Progressive rock albums by British artists Space rock albums