Australian beatnik Daevid Allen was a founder member of Britain's earliest psychedelic band, Soft Machine.He departed from the band after the release of their first classic single Love Makes Sweet Music. He was then banned from Britain, he settled in Paris where he formed the psychedelic rock collective Gong in 1970. The band appeared on stage in their pothead pixie hats, with Allen playing glissando guitar, his partner poet Gilli Smyth on space whisper vocals and a combination of tape loops. Gong created a mixture of ethereal soundscapes mixed with trippy psychedelic lyrics. Playbax comes from a period when Daevid was performing a one man show and experimenting with multi-media Influenced by the cutting edge musical experiments that abounded in late '70s New York Daevid radically changed direction from his previous acoustic troubadour style. Utilising the then embryonic sampling and video technology he radically cut-up, re-mixed and over dubbed the New York Gong LP 'About Time' to produce 'Playbax 80'. It resulted in this stunning and at times assaulting set. Which not only influenced many other multi-media artists such as Laurie Anderson but also broke down the barriers that had previously existed between Art and Performance. Whilst the audio version of Playbax was released way back in 1982. The videos Daevid produced at the time were thought to be lost, until Rob Ayling found them in some of the tapes Daevid left with him to look after in 1988. Daevid said to Rob about the discover and of this release, My heartiest congratulations from the depths of the University of Errors Facultea of Disinformation and Curious Tea Blends. My profound respects. On and off they both talked about how the video and audio would be restored and what format it would take. Alas, Daevid wouldnt see the finished article, but Rob is certain he would have more than approved. This release contains the full Playbax gig from Cleveland 1980 OB CD and on the complete fully restored Playbax videos on DVD, there is an audio recording of Daevid lecture about The Planet Gong which he gave before the performance in Cleveland that night.
