Didier Malherbe

A master of almost any blown reeeds, Malherbe served his time in the jazz bars of Paris in the early 60s listening to the emigre American maestros, before decamping for inner-spacial expansion to Deya in Majorca. Here he met up with Australian surrealist poet and ex-Soft MAchine guitarist Daevid Allen, forming a working association through the band Gong, that continues to this day(2006). After serving almost a decade with the varying incarnations of this band, culminating with Pierre Moerlin's Gong in 1980, Malherbe moved back permanently back to Paris and picked up with the French jazz-rock scene. However wider horizons beckoned and in 1995 he started recording with multi-instrumentalist Loy Ehrlich and American percussionist Steve Shehan under the name Hadouk. This line up features Malherbe mainly on Armenian Doudouk, playing his and Ehrlich's compositions with the same attitude he was admired for in Gong: irreverant but humorous Gallic musical expertise, now depicting an equally ethereal soundscape, but painted with an exclusively accoustic brush. Truly earthly magic - with hiccoughs!