Steve Hillage - Fish Rising (Virgin)

I have a soft spot in my heart for anything Gong related. I can remember, in my junior year, forcing a friend to listen to the whole Planet Gong trilogy in an evening: “See, it’s all related man, outer and inner temple, and check out those vibes in seven, and I bet that’s where Plant got that Now and Zen thing anyway, … they eat the phone book and … why don’t you try …” Geoff was singularly unimpressed. “You got any R.E.M.?”

When I got a copy of Fish Rising in 1992, it was as if I’d found the Grail; to hear Dave Stewart do his wah-wah distorto Hatfield thing on “Solar Music Suite” along with Hillage’s spine-cracking guitar gymnastics—just blew the college kid away!! As if all that wasn’t good enough, there was drone a-plenty and a looped bell, Lindsay Cooper came onboard offering some delicious bassoon lines, all over the late Pierre Moerlen’s rock-solid but imaginative drumming! The only thing was, the CD sounded God-awful! Shallow, lots of hiss, some funny nameless cracking things …

2007 saw the reissue of the entire Hillage run for Virgin, and I couldn’t wait to give my beloved “Salmon Song” one more spin. “Knows the way to be …” The philosophy hadn’t aged remarkably well, but the music still grabbed me—complex, visceral and catchy all in the service of some damn fine playing. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that in this case, remastering had done some good, the hiss levels having been drastically reduced. Now, the crystalline opening moments of “Solar Music Suite” shine brighter, and those bubbles in “Fish” plumb further depths. The bonus tracks are fascinating if ultimately inconsequential, but Mark Powell’s notes are typically informative and fun. Anybody with a bit of nostalgia for Hillage’s glory days (I’ve never been as fond of System 7) can’t go wrong with this well-executed reissue of one of the few “prog” records to still hold my interest.

~ Marc Medwin