“The universe and self and the inside of ourselves is all the same thing, depending on which end you look down the telescope”: Gong continue a “loose trilogy” with Unending Ascending

Gong.

When Gong founder Daevid Allen handed the keys to guitarist/vocalist Kavus Torabi shortly before his death in 2015, he left one instruction: that things should always be moving upwards, always positive.

The venerable band’s latest album, Unending Ascending – the third by the current, post-Allen incarnation of Gong – follows that edict to the letter. Like its predecessor, 2019’s The Universe Also Collapses, it’s as much of a journey as an album. But where that record was an interstellar acid trip that evoked both space and time, Unending Ascending takes a different approach.