Clearlight: Clearlight Symphony (1975)

If you’re a fan of Gong, here’s an album I should suggest you: from Clearlight, called Clearlight Symphony. Sometimes the band is called Clearlight Symphony (but it doesn’t really matter, the band was called simply Clearlight after this album). Mainly Clearlight was a project of French keyboardist Cyrille Verdeaux, and whatever musicians he could find at the time. This album was released on Virgin Records, during an era where the label actually cared for music, instead of being a corporate label in which the Spice Girls recorded for.

Here on Clearlight Symphony, Verdeaux played piano, organ, Mellotron, and ARP 2600 synthesizers. The album consists of only two side length cuts. Side one features him with Steve Hillage on guitar, Didier Malherbe on sax, and Tim Blake on synthesizers. Don’t expect the music to resemble Gong here, what you’ll get is classically influenced symphonic prog with lots of great keyboards. There are a few experimental spacy passages as well. It’s amazing how well the Gong musicians are at playing symphonic prog, when they’re most accustomed to playing fusion-influenced space rock.

The second (and final half) of the album features Gilbert Artman of Lard Free on drums, Martin Isaacs on bass, and Christian Boulé on cosmic guitar. Here the music is more dominated by piano and Mellotron, and has a more Canterbury feel to it, especially parts that resemble Hatfield & the North. Strangely I hear sax here (which is I presume is Didier Malherbe, since I don’t notice him on the first half of the album with the Gong members).

I think the listings on the album got really messed up, as the first part seemed to be just Verdeaux, Hillage, and Blake, and the second half seems to be more Verdeaux, Artman, Malherbe, Isaacs, and Boulé. This album proved why Virgin Records was interested in releasing the Clearlight Symphony album, because of the presence of Gong members (after all Gong was on that label as well). But regardless of the Gong connections here, the album stands by itself, and I highly recommend it to those who enjoy symphonic prog.
– Cyrille Verdeaux: piano, organ, Mellotron, ARP 2600 synthesizer
– Steve Hillage: guitar
– Didier Malherbe: sax
– Tim Blake: synthesizers
– Gibert Artman: drums
– Christian Boulé: cosmic guitar
– Martin Isaacs: bass