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Gong

Bright Spirit

KSCOPE3061 (2026-03-13)

new studio album available to pre-order. Shipped to arrive before 13th March.

Bright Spirit marks the third instalment in a trilogy that began with The Universe Also Collapses (2019) and continued with Unending Ascending (2023). Recorded with the inimitable Frank Byng, Snorkel-master drummer and long-time collaborator throughout the trilogy journey in his South London studio. Bright Spirit reveals Gong at their experimental best, more adventurous and more open to the dream than ever.

And dreams are central here. Not just as lyrical imagery, but as a way of thinking - where psychedelia, love, and the thin membrane between worlds feed into the music. The opener, ‘Dream Of Mine’, unfurls like a transmission from the in-between, its mid-section blooming into harmonies and an angular melody that feels like a key turning in a long-awaited lock. Frontman Kavus Torabi describes it as a moment everything has been pointing toward, a flash of clarity inside the swirl.

Elsewhere, there’s tenderness - unexpected perhaps, but unmistakably Gong, ‘Fragrance Of Paradise’ being Torabi’s first-ever love song. ‘The Wonderment’ finds Gong in deeply meditative form, a mystical and explorative journey both inwards and outwards, timeless and expansive, another piece of the kaleidoscopic puzzle that makes up Bright Spirit.

Conscious and unconscious fragments and patterns of Gong past present and future seem to spiral in the mix in an engaging, sometimes teasing way. Our musical and lyrical presuppositions about Gong are rightly challenged within each track in an endearing, but never twee manner. This is an album which will reward repeated visits, much like the concept of the Planet itself. I'm now tempted to try the arc of the entire Trilogy in sequence.