Daevid Allen's University Of Errors: Money Doesn't Make It
(1999; innerSPACE 7707) 44m

Summary of history:
Well everyone reading this should at least have heard of Daevid Allen.
One of the founders of Gong and Soft Machine he's one of the ringleaders
in the late sixties/early seventies. His interest has mostly been in oddball
bands playing interesting but oddball music. Now he has reared his head again
in a collaboration with people from Mushroom on the American innerSPACE label.
In the bio sheet the music is described as neo-psychedelic in the vein of
Nick Solomon's Bevis Frond and also the largely, but unjustifiably ignored
Cul De Sac (I'm not sure about the States, but here in Europe they are quite
obscure).

The album:
We open with the title track, a track in the style of Can but with a rather
prominent guitar, carefreely meandering through the song. The vocals of Allen
are low and intimate sounding, as if he's whispering it in your ares and meant
for you only. After this first excursion into space roc we come to longest track on
the album, the nine minutes Prince Of Sidewalk Scooter. Again, the music
and vocals are quite loosely matched. The bassplaying is very repetitive and
clearly audible, while the guitar is quite ethereal. I like the moods in this
music. It is all very relaxed, but notwithstanding the repetitive nature, it
is not boring. After this strong piece, we come to False Teacher. This track
has some World music influences, with Allen singing in a purposely accented
way. The lyrics sound critical of ehm false teachers and in this case it seems
mostly directed towards money making yogi's. Meditative music except for the
lyrics. The short Involve Me brings back the dissonant guitar. Mullumbimby
Mother brings us back to relaxed space music with some quircky vocals by
Allen. Not that interesting. Submarine Of Salt is a short soundscape with
a short text at the end. In Prof. Improbable's Preambule the focus is
on the guitar work and some nice audible bass work. The bass is a rather
subdued low one, while the guitar meanders around a bit, to and fro, here
and there. Cunning Style Construct opens as a vocal piece and turns into
something percussive reminiscent in the vague distance as some kind of bolero.
However, the music gets quite noisy along the way with some loud guitar
excursions, but for the most part incoherent sounds. In this way we move
right into Talkwind Upswerve with its louder guitars and space rock pace.
If I would ever marry, Wedding Music is not what would be played at that
particular feast, since it would not only drive my guests, but also the bride
away. In this last part of the album, the short tracks flow into each other
and we have now arrived at the last song, Burn Your Money, a mid tempo space
rock track as a reprise to the opening title track. The last track is a
computer talking about orgasms.

The story on the cartoon cover of this album describes quite well
(in retrospect) what this album is about.

Conclusion:
This is space rock ,but not of the Hawkwind or Gong kind. The quirckiness
of Gong is here, because of the lyrics and lyrical performance of Allen,
but the guitarwork is both spacey and dissonant at times and might even
remind some of David Torn. Notwithstanding the meandering freeflowing aspects
of the music, I found it to be captivating. I do feel anyone wanting to
appreciate this music sould be able to stand some experimentation (of such
bands as Can).

Jurriaan Hage