There’s an enchanting charm about Daevid Allen’s work, whether as part of Gong or through his multitudinous musical associations – and especially in his solo works. His two albums recorded in Deya, Mallorca, with support from local musicians are the epitome of this. The first, Good Morning, was reissued a couple of years back, while Now Is… reappears just as Allen has reconnected with Gong for a 40th anniversary album and tour, and has completed his second volume of Gong Dreaming memoirs.
Allen left Gong’s ranks in April 1975, complaining of negative energies in the band, and spent the next two years producing these introverted and thoughtfully impressionistic songs. There’s something quintessentially gentleman-like about these Balearic-drenched musings. He’d also parted company with Gong’s original label, Virgin, after Good Morning, but even his sharply observed satire on the music industry, Poet For Sale, posseses a chiding facade rather than a vitriolic salvo – as though the overarching theme of Now Is… should be summed up as a wiser man cleansing himself of that which he cannot control.
Mixing short excerpts from a lecture at the ICA and a poetry reading at a Deyan amphitheatre named in honour of the area’s most notable literary resident, Robert Graves, with extended ambient pieces, the album’s 11-minute glissando centrepiece, I Am, in particular is an essential portrait of an artist at a particular stage in his journey. That he finishes feeling comfortable in what he tells us was “absolutely one of my happiest times” is evident not just from the album’s title, but is wrapped up in the warm ease of the music.
