Daevid Allen was a geographical and musical nomad who wandered from British psychedelia to French avant-garde, Balearic acoustic balladry, New York punk, Oz performance poetry, San Francisco improv, Japanese extreme tripping and Brazilian space rock.
He is best known as the founder of Gong, and their leader until his death in 2015, but his 60-odd (and they are odd) non-Gong albums include collaborations with anyone who crossed his path and inspired his musical imagination.
One of those collaborations has been remastered with bonus remixes 20 years after it was originally released, and it explores the more experimental side of his work.
DJDDAY – the title is a nod to an abandoned attempt at a 1973 single, Ooby-Scooby-Doomsday, Or The D-Day DJ’s Got The DDT Blues – is credited to Weird Biscuit Teatime, a name Allen came up with for a quartet that included Michael Clare on bass, drummer Trey Sabatelli and Don Falcone on synths, percussion, rhythm bass and samples. Originally released in 2005, the new version credits Allen on the cover in the hope it will fare better than it did first time around.
The history of the record is remarkably complicated but, in a very small nutshell, it happened something like this…
Clare was one of the members of an earlier Allen project, the University of Errors, which came together in San Francisco at the end of 1998. The bassist, who had worked with Daevid in a managerial capacity, suggested recording a song to be submitted for a sampler issued by the Gong Appreciation Society. With Pat Thomas on drums, and Josh Pollock and Jay Radford on guitars, a jam session provided enough material for the UoE’s 1999 debut album, Money Doesn’t Make It.
Meanwhile, Don Falcone of San Fran space rockers Spirits Burning had sent out an open invitation to fellow musicians inviting them to take part in a new project. Both Allen and Clare made contributions that appeared on subsequent Spirits Burning albums.
In 2001, when Allen was back in San Francisco to play with the UoE again, he and Clare heard some new material from Falcone and wanted to do an entire album together as a band, along with East Bay-based drummer Sabatelli. Falcone’s keyboards, samples and electronic percussion provided the bedrock of the tracks – the rest of the band then added their contributions over the top, with Allen improvising on guitar and vocals, sometimes just recording one or two takes.
The results are indeed weird, even by Allen’s standards. Dense and rhythmic, yet still unpredictable and surprising, the album offers up elements of Krautrock, throbbing Balearic beats, twisted acid jazz and Allen’s own Divided Alien Playbax cut ‘n’ paste experiments of the 1980s.
Falcone’s keyboard washes and playful noises, Clare’s rich, meaty bass and Sabatelli’s insistent ‘motorik’ beats allow Allen to do what he does best, which is to provide mischievous vocals that sound as if he is chanting with a big grin on his face, or stabs of angular and wacky guitar noises that have more to do with Miles Davis and John Coltrane than any six-string heroes (or Zeroes).
Lyrically, it is typical Allen fare, both profound and profoundly silly – ‘Old king dole was a merry old soul / And a merry old soul was he / But I wonder if he knows about computers in abundance?’ he sings on Oh Dear, while on Technicolour Tongue he suggests: ‘We are beggars and we are thieves / In this court of miracles’.
It all sounds a bit mad and random but there are moments when you can actually dance to this music. Instrumental opener DJ Herbal Extract pounds along relentlessly, with Clare providing a fat, repetitive bass along with Sabatelli’s beat. Beezlebabble Slush sounds like something you could hear in an Ibiza nightclub if you were also having a row with some bad-tempered Klingons.
Meanwhile, there’s real menace in Transhuman Future, which blends headbanging rock riffing with Tom Dambly’s muted trumpet to create acid jazz from hell.
Technicolour Tongue has Allen supplying Afro/Indian chants to a big, thumping beat that will crumble the foundations of your house. And This Could Be The End could indeed be the soundtrack to Armageddon if it wasn’t for the catchy keyboard chord sequence. But there are also moments of great beauty, particularly in the drone-like quality of the drummer-less Lavender that sounds as if Allen is playing his trademark glissando guitar.
The centrepiece of the album is the powerful and sprawling eight-minute instrumental Cathode Cathedral that opens with gentle, repetitive riffs played high up on the bass strings (I think) over cosmic keyboard washes before crashing into a deep, chugging rhythm, like a runaway steam train. Then we return to the contemplative bass and keyboard sounds, with glissando guitar and distant, echoey metallic crashes.
This is strange music indeed, and will frighten some people, even Allen fans who love his earlier acoustic-based albums. It’s true that there’s little here that one could describe as ‘melody’ or even ‘songs’, although the heavily vocal numbers such as Fashion Victim (Rubber Duck Dub) and Oh Dear (in which Allen channels his much earlier Poet for Sale poem by chanting ‘Choose me! Use me!’) come close. But there is something hypnotic about it – it draws you in to its weird, disturbing world and doesn’t let go.
And it all sounds so damn good! The quality of this remastered version is pristine and you can hear every note, every beat, every swoop and cry and crash.
Ten years after his death, there is no-one with the balls and the I-don’t-give-a-fuckery to approach music in the way Allen did throughout his 60-year career, and this is a prime example of how inventive and experimental he could be. It’s the sound of four like-minded individuals exploring the outer reaches of music. Just hang on tight and enjoy the ride.
TRACK LISTING
01. DJ Herbal Extract (5:06)
02. Fashion Victim (3:39)
03. Lavender (5:11)
04. Oh Dear (4:40)
05. Beezlebabble Slush (4:15)
06. Technicolour Tongue (3:45)
07. Cathode Cathedral (8:13)
08. Transhuman Future (3:42)
09. This Could Be The End (4:56)
~ Bonus tracks:
10. Technicolour Tongue (skinny mix for Daevid) (3:55)
11. Oh Dear (an instrumental mix) (4:44)
12. Beezlebabble Slush (Yush Up mix) (4:14)
13. Transhuman Future (altruistic mix) (3:43)
14. Lavender (quiet teatime celebration mix) (5:17)
Total Time – 65:00
MUSICIANS
Daevid Allen – Guitars, Vocals, Lyrics
Michael Clare – Bass
Don Falcone – Synths, Samples, Percussion, Rhythm Bass
Trey Sabatelli – Drums
Mychael Merrill – Kettle Drum (2)
John Purves – Duduk (14)
Edward Huson – Table & Bayan (14)
Torn Dambly – Trumpets (8)
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Deko Entertainment
Country of Origin: UK/International
Date of Release: 25th July 2025
LINKS
Daevid Allen – Website | University Of Errors | Bandcamp
Gong – Website | Website | Facebook | Info at Deko Entertainments | Instagram
