French pseudo-beatnik
Dashiell Hedayat persuaded the psychedelic, prog-rocking Gong to back him up on
Obsolete, his second (and final) album project. This is the Continental Circus-era Gong, and the song structures here resemble that album's stripped-down sound. Propelled by Allen's spacy guitar and Malherbe's spicy sax, the tunes on
Obsolete, though at times experimental, aren't as involving or full-blown as those on Gong's Camembert Electrique, recorded on the heels of Hedayat's album.
Hedayat sings, or rather talks, in French on each piece. He wrote/composed all the "songs" in the autumn of 1969; the compositions were then recorded in May 1971. One of the most interesting and fleshed-out cuts is "Long Song for Zelda." Introductory acoustic guitar (courtesy of Tritsch) leads to actual singing from
Hedayat before he breaks into his standard monologue. Allen conjures up mild guitar atmospherics which lend a lazy
Traffic-like quality to the music, and
William S. Burroughs brings the piece to a close with an obscure 12-second quote.