Gong - Expresso II (1978)

Year: March 1978 (CD Dec 16, 1989)
Label: Virgin Records (Japan), VJD-5019
Style: Canterbury Scene, Progressive Rock, Jazz Rock, Blues Rock
Country: Paris, France
Time: 37:32
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 252 Mb

Key to the new album’s rich aesthetic was an increased emphasis on percussion. While rhythms had always been given a prominent role under the drummer’s stewardship, never before had they come in such variety or enjoyed such precedence. With Pierre Moerlen and brother Benoit playing a variety of mallet instruments, Mireille Bauer added further marimba and vibraphone textures to Francois Causse’s tribal conga drum patterns to create a whirlwind of high and low pitched polyrhythms.
Something of an anomaly in the context of the album, opener “Heavy Tune” finds former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor’s steely guitar work adding a hard rock edge to a strident jazz-funk jam. More representative, the following “Golden Dilemma” features a furious-paced percussive barrage offset by Hansford Rowes’s funky rhythm guitar licks, while the gentle “Sleepy” features the band at their most dreamlike, with multiple layers of vibes and marimba creating a magic box effect that’s abetted by similarly mystical violin courtesy of former Curved Air man Darryl Way. Elsewhere, the sprightly “Soli,” driven by Hansford Rowe’s roaming bass runs, and Francois Causse’s Latin conga rhythms, heads yet further into jazz fusion territory, a path continued with the erroneously titled, gamelan-influenced “Boring” and the conga-heavy Latin experiments of “Three Blind Mice.”
Expresso II’s release saw out the band’s contract with Virgin and was to be the final studio album under the Gong moniker until 1992. Rechristened Pierre Moerlen’s Gong, the outfit would continue to mine their rhythm-heavy brand of jazz fusion into the 80s.
(udiscovermusic.com/stories/rediscover-gongs-expresso-ii/)

Album recorded and mixed in the analog domain - AAD. That is, a minimum of digital processing.
A=Analog. D=digital. The first letter stands for how the music was recorded. The second letter for how it was mixed. The third letter stands for the format (all CD's will have D as the last letter).

01. Heavy Tune (06:25)
02. Golden Dilemma (04:53)
03. Sleepy (07:18)
04. Soli (07:39)
05. Boring (06:26)
06. Three Blind Mice (04:49)

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