To celebrate their 40th Anniversary of live touring, Gong, the progressive/psychedelic rock band originally founded in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen will join forces with guitarist Steve Hillage and other core members from the original line-up for a rare UK tour in November 2009. The UK shows will mark the first time Gong have toured the UK since 2000.

Gong are currently working on a brand new forward-looking album called "2032," the same year that the Planet Gong makes full contact with the Planet Earth - and a major new chapter in the continually evolving Gong mythology. The album is due to be released in September 2009.

Gong's music has often been described as space rock. The highly anticipated forthcoming tour will reunite founding member Daevid Allen with former Gong members Steve Hillage, Gilli Smyth, Mike Howlett and Miquette Giraudy, plus Chris Taylor, Theo Travis and John McKenzie.

Gong originally formed in 1967, after Allen, a member of Soft Machine, was denied entry to the United Kingdom because of a visa complication. Allen remained in France where he and a London-born Sorbonne professor, Gilli Smyth, established the first incarnation of the band. This line-up, including Ziska Baum on vocals and Loren Standlee on flute, fragmented during the 1968 student revolution, with Allen and Smyth forced to flee France for Deya in Majorca.

They allegedly found saxophonist Didier Malherbe living in a cave in Deya, before film director Jérôme Laperrousaz invited the band back to France to record the soundtrack of his movie "Continental Circus." They were subsequently approached by Jean Karakos of the newly formed independent label BYG and signed a multi-album deal that included the albums - "Magick Brother," "Mystic Sister," "Camembert Electrique," plus Allen's solo album "Bananamoon."

Gong played at the second Glastonbury Festival in June 1971, which they followed up with a UK tour the following autumn. In late 1972 they were subsequently one of the first acts to sign to Virgin Records, getting first pick of the studio time ahead of Mike Oldfield. By now, a regular line-up had established itself and Gong released their "Flying Teapot" album. After the band signed with Virgin subsidiary Caroline Records, "Camembert Electrique" was given a belated UK release in late 1974.

Between 1973 and 1974, Gong, now augmented by guitarist Steve Hillage, released their best-known work, the "Radio Gnome Trilogy", three records that expounded upon the Gong mythology, "Flying Teapot," "Angel's Egg," and "You."

In 1975 at a gig in Cheltenham, Allen refused to go on stage, claiming that a "wall of force" was preventing him, and subsequently left the band. With both Smyth, who wanted to spend more time with her two children, and synth wizard Tim Blake having jumped off in previous months, this marked the end of the 'classic' line-up.

The band continued, touring the UK in November 1975 (as documented on the 2005 release "Live in Sherwood Forest '75") and worked on their next album "Shamal", but Hillage, who had been the band's de facto leader since Allen's exit, and his partner Miquette Giraudy, who had taken over from Smyth in late 1974, left before "Shama" was released in early 1976. Â They re-joined the band briefly for a 1977 live reunion in Paris, and released the punk rock-influenced "Opium For The People" single.