2026
I had to run away. Hands over my ears.
Trying to blink away the terrible images of the elderly dancing like malfunctioning robots snatched up by a hurricane and robbed of solid ground beneath their feet.
As the guitars ground tunes into flint dust, keyboard sounded like someone trying to break into a crypt with the wrong keys and the drummer’s licks were the drunk punches that failed to land on the vocalist for the local band as he tried to render Billy Idol’s White Wedding listenable to the sober/unstoned visitors looking wistfully out to sea.
As I sped away the sound of the local band playing The Boys Are Back in Town tore chunks out of my heels.
Fortunately I was not pursued by Laelaps, the mythical Greek dog who never failed to catch his prey.
So it was full speed to the Booking Hall and the Gong gig a few hundred yards down the main Dover road.
The Booking Hall is off the roundabout – as if history had spun a centrifuge and parked the old Harbour buildings there to retire gracefully and provide a venue for those who want more from their music than the death rattle of a 1980s jukebox.
Why was I there? On the same day as the Dover Regatta?
Well, I was off to see Gong play the first of their 2026 UK Bright Spirit Tour dates after what was by all accounts a very successful Tour of Europe.
Though as I write this, Gong have sidestepped the White Cliffs and are now playing Toulouse tonight, July 7th 2026 – then Aix and Rouen – and back to storm the beaches and finish the rest of the UK Tour. Resuming on the 14th July at the Horn in St Albans.
With the same line up that never seems to burn out – maintaining energy levels that would make the National Grid blush – and the Large Haldron Collider grind to a halt.
I’m not a life long Gong fan and I’m not expert on the Gong Dynasty and their recording history but my hippy days in the 1970s had Gong orchestrating a trip or two in the ‘breakers yard’ that passed for the garden of a squat in Brixton. So part of my DNA is going to have
G O N G genes scaling the Helix. I guess that makes me an Initiate.
So attending my first Gong gig (I wouldn’t swear to that) I felt a bit like a NASA scientist kicked out of the Lab and sent to meet the Space Travelers and their loyal followers.
A Sacrificial Virgin come to offer myself up unprotesting to the 2026 Gong Bright Experience now that Daevid Alleyn has passed on, and Kavus Torabi has stepped up to the stage to lead not only the new Gong but the Cardiacs after the death of Tim Marshall who died in July 2020 almost six years to the month.
How will the new revitalised Cardiacs and Gong sound under the piloting of Kavus? Definitely not as one Facebook user suggested a “Tribute Band”.
Gong released their newest studio album, Bright Spirit, on March 13th 2026. It is the third part of a trilogy that started with The Universe Also Collapses in 2019 and Unending Ascending in 2023. The 7-track album features a dreamy, space-rock sound and is available on CD, digital and vinyl.
And live shows like the one I attended that kick that theory right out the stain glass window and the innovative line – up of both Bands with Kavus up front are unceasing creative forces who won’t settle with just keeping the original magic alive but rush to provide a constant stream of new exciting alchemy with the abandon of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
I guess the answer could be:
‘Choose Yr Own Prophecy’
I knew most of the songs from the new setlist and I was fortunate enough to catch the last night of Kavus Torabi’s Solo Tour at the Face Bar in Reading on 10th February 2026,
which has a lower stage than the Booking Room and felt a bit more open to interaction.
Though Kavus remedied the stage height situation at the Booking Hall in Dover by coming right down amongst the audience and serenading the dancers with blasts of high powered searing guitar that made you wonder if the roof would stay on.
I’ve got to admit the music was ‘heavy’ and at times it felt like I was standing up to a barrage of sound.
Two lead guitars/vocals Torabi and Fabio Golfetti, bass/vocals Dave Sturt, saxophone/woodwinds Ian West and drummer/vocals Cheb Nettles, who could have given John Bonham a run for his money with some juggernaut powered drumming.
Sometimes I wish I could have heard Ian West on sax more, perhaps I was at the wrong end of the stage to hear it clearly.
I don’t think the acoustics are very good and it’s a high box of a Hall and the sound of the instruments got mixed up at times.
I asked the guy next to me at the end of one song: “Do you think that’s heavy?”
His reply was: “Yep man, that was heavy.”
But, that said there were some beautiful nuances and the instrumental sounds seemed to trickle neatly into each other with some delicate shimmering chimes coming from Fabio’s guitar strings as he used a steel rod on the strings to create a sound not unlike Balinese Temple music, which gave the music an almost spiritual feel after some pretty heavy
energised rock.
When Kavus wasn’t reminding me occasionally of Wilco Johnson’s scything across the stage, guitar thrust forward, strafing the stage with one amazing guitar riff after another he was on the edge of the stage arms outstretched upwards as is exalting us to levitate up to meet him, he was acclaiming with full voice “Rejoice I’m Dead’.
(Kavus if you ever think of starting a friendly cult I will join up.)
Fortunately nobody was dead especially Kavus and we all were treated to over two hours of some of the most energised transcendental mind-blowing music I’ve heard this side of Jimi Hendrix colliding on stage with Weather Report and Sun Ra, who famously said:
“Music is a plane of wisdom, because music is a universal language.”
Just as Jimi Hendrix also said to an interviewer shortly before he died in 1970 when asked “what comes next “, he replied “I’m gonna make Opium Music but you will have to bring your own Opium.”
Space is the Place and Gong goes a long way to filling it with some of the most incredible music you will find this side of all the Galaxies known to man.
With a Tour ongoing if you are not one of the loyal Gong followers then there’s a sign on the door for new recruits/converts like me. Check the Tour dates and locations and go along and have a fantastic memorable evening.
Setlist of the evening:
Dream Of Mine
Kapital
Mantivule
My Guitar is A Spaceship
Rejoice!
Tiny Galaxies
My Sawtooth Wake
Lunar Invocation
The Wonderment
Master Builder
Stars in Heaven
Choose Yr Own Prophecy
.
Malcolm Paul
Photos from the present BRIGHT SPIRIT TOUR
.