Sunday, September 13, 2009

Princess Flower & the Moon Rays - Dreaming the Magic of Your Maya (1969)

A group of American freaks hanging out in Paris who joined up with an exiled Daevid Allen post-Soft Machine to form what has been referred to as Proto-Gong (aka Banana Moon #1), existing from late 1967 through 1968. They recorded this one LP in Paris in Spring 1968 before D.A. and Gilli Smyth did their Gong thing. The LP contains 6 tracks dominated by Standlee’s meandering flute and occasional vocals spewing out what appears to be free associative poetry. Daevid Allen is credited as being on only one track on Side 2; another guitarist, with the rather suspicious name of Fej Mornin, is credited with the guitar playing on Side 1, most of which does sound somewhat suspiciously like Allen’s style. The album opens with a short spurt of flute and laughter (male & female - could that be Daevid & Gilli?). It leads into the first song, “Lovin Spaceship”, a sort of Proto-Gong bluesy guitar strummer with Dylanesque stream of consciousness lyrics and a Booby D harmonica finale. Following is “Women of Moon”, another free association Dylanesque blues strum. Side 1 winds up with a long track listed as two songs on the label. First is “Vanishing Rama”, a long krishna jam led by Standlee’s flute, echoed guitar sounding very much like Allen’s glissando guitar playing and crude “tin pot” drumming. Midway, a Spoonfull rhythm intrudes, leading into proto-Gong space avant wanking. This flows directly into “Guharam Rock”, more free association/guitar strumming, though this time with a more rocking rhythm set by “shoe box” drumming. Standlee’s flute at its most meandering joins in toward the end. Side 2 opens with the one track that officially credits Daevid Allen, “Between Spirits”. This track is pure Gong; atonal flute over glissando guitar with nonsense vocals flitting in and out. The LP ends on the lengthy “Ancient Faces”. This is a raga-fueled flute and percussion instrumental with a female “chanter” Ziska Baum, described as Gilli Smyth’s “soul-sister”and sounds very much like her. The music is trancey, yet floating and a jew’s harp briefly floats into the mix about midway. As the harp fades away, the percussion intensifies, a male chanter is added and the now double-tracked flute engages in atonal sputtering until the LP ends as it began with a few seconds of laughter. Princess Flower and the Moon Rays dissolved in the spring of 1968 when Paris was enveloped by student riots. Loren Standlee and Ziska Baum returned to the U.S. after she was busted for marijuana possession. Standlee, Ziska and percussionist Raja Samyana were members through the late 60s of The Universal Mutant Repertory Company, which also included original Velvet Underground drummer Angus MacLise and his wife Hetty. Samyana is listed as guitarist, though. This LP is believed to have been released in New York City, where Standlee was very active as the 3 or 4 known copies have all been found there. This Akashic label does not appear to be related to any other by that name (Maitreya Kali, etc). [MA] Taken from here

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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now THIS is one obscure little nugget.

Historical artifact , as well as being an interesting listen for all of Daevid`s fans.

THANK YOU , Lisa!!!!

~Vdorje

Melisma Mixolidio said...

I came from femalevocals.blogspot, I am looking for this song:
http://www.goear.com/listen/14cf6cb/no_se-tampoco

maybe you can help me

Thanks!

Aguar said...

Hola incluido en
http://rock-blogroll.blogspot.com/

Garry Lee said...

Many thanks for posting this. As a huge Daevid Allen / Gong fan, this is an album I would have probably never found if it was'nt for you! Peace & Best wishes, GL

cozmicbeat said...

Many many thanks : this one was incredibly rare !!!

Anonymous said...

Hi Lisa,

If you could find these first 3 for us, we'd be eternally grateful, all 5 would be wonderful:

1) Intensity - s/t (GBR) 1973
2) The New Dawn - Mainline (GBR) 1969
3) Jed - Merlin's Song (1982)
4) Echoes and a Dream - s/t 1973
5) Pig Rider - Heterphonies 1976

Thanks,

R

Anonymous said...

Hi
thanks for this gift - true treasure!

tim said...

Another visitor from planetgong leaves their grateful thanks.

tim said...

another visitor from planetgong leaves their thanks

Alchemical Music said...

Thank you very much for this one!

By the way, here's my blog (still at the beginning):

http://alchemicalmusic.blogspot.com/

paulramone said...

Thanks a lot for all these gems

Anonymous said...

http://www.planetgong.co.uk/bazaar/vinyl/dreaming_12.shtml

limited rerelease (550 copies)

Mike F. said...

There are two items in this blog for which I wish the links were not broken. This is one of them :-(

GREAT site btw. Now if only I will stumble across the 2 mid '70s albums by Renaud on the Disjuncta label (WHY are those 2 great albums not to be found on any download site I have ever come across? They are like wonderful lost Heldon albums - but better)

Guitarradeplastico,scraping oddities said...

Many thanks