777 [A-Wave]

Personnel: Steve Hillage (guitar, programming); Kris Weston, Lewis Keogh, Miquette Giraudy (keyboards); Matt Austin (programming).
Audio Mixers: Dare Mason; Lewis Keogh; Miquette Giraudy; The Orb.
Recording information: Butterfly Studios (09/1992).
Editor: Steve Hillage.
Photographer: Trevor Key.
Steve Hillage's post-Gong career stands as an example and inspiration to aging hippies fighting musical obsolescence. After channeling his extraordinary guitar skills into a series of increasingly out-there "solo" albums, Hillage joined keyboardist Miquette Giraudy, enlisted such preeminent dance-floor forces as Derrick May, The Orb's Alex Paterson and Thrash, Youth (Killing Joke), and Paul Oakenfold, and set his sights on the conquest of technopolis. System 7's eponymous debut (1991) worked Hillage's scintillating glissandos and six-string cascades, Giraudy's glittering melodies, and crafty production into a sumptuous stew of beats that straddled techno, trance, world, pop, and ambient musics.
For 1992's astonishing 777, Hillage and Giraudy teamed up with Paterson and Youth (again), Tony Thorpe, and such talented engineers as Greg Hunter, Jim Abbiss, and Dare Mason. Thorpe/Youth/Hillage's "7:7 Expansion" sets the controls for the heart of an ever-growing, pulsating trance groove. Hunter's glorious "Desir (Ghost Mix)" and "On The Seventh Night" work a middle ground between emotive Detroit-styled techno and storming ethnodelic club fare. The Orb boys take the reigns on "A Dry Cool Place," supplying "ambience and navigation" through crystal-world rainforest atmospherics and lush wall-to-wall rhythms. Hillage's liquid-glass guitar work defies gravity throughout, particularly on the jaw-dropping ending triad.