Camembert Electrique

Camembert Electrique
Studio album by Gong
Released October 1971
Recorded June to September 1971 at Château d'Hérouville, Hérouville, France
Genre Progressive rock, psychedelic rock, space rock
Length 39:36
Label BYG Actuel
Producer Pierre Lattès
Gong chronology

Magick Brother
(1970)		 Camembert Electrique
(1971)		 Continental Circus
(1972)
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Camembert Electrique is an album by Gong, recorded and originally released in 1971. The album was recorded at Château d'Hérouville near Paris, France, produced by Pierre Lattès and engineered by Gilles Salle. Jean Karakos (credited in Daevid Allen's liner notes as "Byg Jean Kastro Kornflakes") was executive producer.

Release history

The album was originally released in France in October 1971 on the label BYG Actuel (catalogue number 529.353), and reissued in 1974 in the UK by Virgin Records (catalogue number VC-502), where it sold for 59p, the price of a single, a marketing scheme Virgin had used the year before for the album The Faust Tapes by Faust, in the hope that greatly discounted albums would give more exposure to the artists and encourage sales of their regularly priced albums, although these discounted albums did not qualify for album chart listings. It was also issued twice on Virgin's Caroline Records budget label (catalogue number C-1505 also in 1974, and C-1520 around 1976), still at a discount price, but no longer priced as low as a single. In the late 1970s it was reissued on Charly Records whose edition was in print in the UK concurrently with Virgin's. More recently it has been reissued in the UK on CD by Snapper Music (catalogue number SNAP-009) and on 180-gram vinyl by Get Back Records (catalogue number GET-610).

Track listing

Side one

  1. "Radio Gnome Invisible" (Daevid Allen) – 0:26
  2. "You Can't Kill Me" (Allen) – 6:23
  3. "I've Bin Stone Before" (Allen) / "Mister Long Shanks" (Allen) / "O Mother" (Allen) – 4:53
  4. "I Am Your Fantasy" (Gilli Smyth, Christian Tritsch) – 3:41
  5. "Dynamite" / "I Am Your Animal" (Smyth, Tritsch) – 4:32
  6. "Wet Cheese Delirium" (Allen) – 0:29

Side two

  1. "Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen's Heads" (Allen) – 0:13
  2. "Fohat Digs Holes in Space" (Allen, Smyth) – 6:24
  3. "And You Tried So Hard" (Tritsch, Allen) – 4:39
  4. "Tropical Fish" (Allen) / "Selene" (Allen) – 7:36
  5. "Gnome the Second" (Allen) – 0:26

Track 1 is titled "Radio Gnome Prediction" on Virgin editions and "Radio Gnome" on later CD editions to avoid confusion with the later song titled "Radio Gnome Invisible", released in 1973 on the Flying Teapot album. Similarly, Gong recorded a completely different song titled "Selene" on the Angel's Egg album. Also, "Wet Cheese Delirium" is misspelled "Delirum", and "And You Tried So Hard" is shortened to "Tried So Hard" on some recent editions.

The first and last tracks on each side are short collages of sound effects which begin or end each side of the original LP. On both sides of the LP the audio begins in the widely spaced lead groove (on the original edition, but appearing as a banded track on most later editions), and at the end of the side, the audio continues into the locked groove.

Personnel

Also listed among the personnel are "Venux De Luxe" (Francis Linon), the band's live sound engineer, as "switch doctor and mix master", and Robert Wyatt's son Sam.

References