''Magick Brother'' is the debut 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. Init ...

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 ...

, recorded in Paris during September and October 1969 and released in March 1970 on the French BYG Actuel label. The band's recently recruited bass player Christian Tritsch was not ready in time to play on the album, and so singer/songwriter/guitarist

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) ...

played the bass guitar himself; a photo of Allen recording bass tracks for the album is featured on the cover artwork. They also made use of jazz contrabass (double bass) players Earl Freeman and

Barre Phillips Barre Phillips (born October 27, 1934, in San Francisco, California, United States) is an American jazz bassist. A professional musician since 1960, he moved to New York City in 1962, then to Europe in 1967. Since 1972, he has been based in south ...

, who were recording for the label at the same time, on three tracks. Occasional early Gong collaborator Dieter Gewissler, who normally played violin, also contributed some "free" bowed contrabass to two tracks. The LP sleeves were printed before the final track order and titles had been decided and so the songs "Rational Anthem" (AKA "Change the World") and "Glad To Sad To Say" were listed the wrong way round. Shortly afterwards, the band played its debut gig at the BYG Actuel Festival in the small town of Amougies, Belgium, on 27 October 1969, introduced to the stage by bemused compere

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity and satire of A ...

Track listing

All songs written by

, though credited to his partner

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, s ...

for legal reasons.Allen, Daevid. ''Gong Dreaming 2''. SAF Publishing, 2009, p. 20. Produced by Jean Georgakarakos and Jean Luc Young. The version on CD has a different tracks grouping and lengths:

Credits

;Gong *

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...

, vocals *

– space whisper *

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 ...

– flute,

soprano saxophone The soprano saxophone is a higher-register variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument invented in the 1840s. The soprano is the third-smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists (from smallest to largest) of the soprillo, so ...

* Rachid Houari –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

;Additional personnel *

– contrabass on 4 & 10 * Earl Freeman – contrabass on 8, piano on 9 *

Burton Greene Burton Greene (June 14, 1937 – June 28, 2021) was an American free jazz pianist born in Chicago, Illinois, though most known for his work in New York City. He explored multiple genres, including avant-garde jazz and the Klezmer medium. Biogra ...

– piano on 8 * Dieter Gewissler – bowed

contrabass Contrabass (from it, contrabbasso) refers to several musical instruments of very low pitch—generally one octave below bass register instruments. While the term most commonly refers to the double bass (which is the bass instrument in the orchest ...

on 2 & 9 * Tasmin Smyth (Gilli's daughter) – voices on 1 & 10

References

{{Authority control 1970 debut albums Gong (band) albums Charly Records albums Psychedelic rock albums by British artists