GONG - the proto-hippy, psychedelic troubadours of the 60s and 70s - are back.
In some respects they never went away, appearing in various guises with porous line-ups over the decades.
But it was in the student uprisings of 1968 Paris that a loose cabal of hippy anarchist musicians formed around Soft Machine alumnus Daevid Allen.
Branded dangerous revolutionaries, he and poetess Gilli Smyth fled the country and soon his vision crystallised around a new outfit named Gong.
The rest is history but now, to celebrate their 40th anniversary, there’s a rare UK tour, a new album, and the return of the core line-up - including virtuoso guitarist Steve Hillage.
Founder member Daevid Allen is now in his 70s, and had vowed never to tour Europe again.
But he, Hillage, Smyth, saxophonist Didier Malherbe et al were lured back into the studio together by the renewed chemistry they forged at the Gong Family Unconvention in Amsterdam in 2006.
Their eccentric mix of rock, jazz, trance and acid-drenched whimsy has been in and out of fashion.
Dozens of modern bands have cited them as an influence, including trip-hop heroes Massive Attack who invited them to play at their Meltdown Festival last summer.
There are echoes of Gong in many ambient and trance sounds today and virtually every rock fan of a certain age owned a battered copy of the seminal Camembert Electrique LP, cleverly re-released by Richard Branson’s fledgling Virgin record company at 50p a throw.
The ‘classic’ line-up of Allen, Smyth, Hillage, Malherbe, synth-wizard Tim Blake and bassist Mike Howlett went on to record the albums known as the ‘Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy’ - Flying Teapot, Angel’s Egg and You.
Hillage last recorded with Gong in 1974 - the year Harold Wilson walked back into Downing street and US President Richard Nixon was having a little local difficulty with a break-in at the Watergate building.
Since then Hillage has enjoyed a successful solo career with a Top Ten album and re-invented himself as half, with partner Miquette Giraudy, of techno/psy-trance outfit System 7 - favourites at the annual Glade Festival.
So why return to the Gong fold now?
He told Newburytoday: “Because it’s fun, that’s the only reason we’re doing it. We’re all getting along really well, despite being older, a bit wiser and even madder.
“The reception we’ve been getting live is fantastic and it’s great to see that a lot of the people in the audience are young. It’s partly for them that we’re playing a lot of the classic stuff because it will be the first chance they’ve had to hear it live.”
The new album, 2032, also grew out of the renewed camaraderie the band experienced playing live together again at the Unconvention, said Hillage.
He added: “It continues the Gong mythology of the earlier albums. Daevid, Gilli, Miquette and I wrote it together in Australia earlier this year.”
Hillage has also dusted off his own back catalogue as a solo artist and confirmed: “The Steve Hillage Band will be the support act on the tour.”
Gong play the 02 Academy, Oxford, on Saturday, November 28.
Tickets, priced £18.50 are available on 01865 204 057 or via www.planetgong.co.uk
Doors open 6.30pm and the show starts at 7pm.