Those rich Canterbury tonalities of 1975’s Fish Rising that Steve Hillage retained from his tenure with Gong aren’t as prevalent on 1979’s Open, but his inspired inventiveness blossoms right from the opening “Talking to the Sun,” where grooving bass lines are imported alongside the kinds of conjoined guitar hamonies that echo Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson's guitar work with Thin Lizzy. What later made Hillage a celebrated producer was his love for all kinds of music — this can be heard in the shape-shifting “1988 Aktivator,” where punk rock’s bastardization of Chuck Berry riffs ignite the song before Hillage comes in singing like the Damned’s Dave Vanian. But the brilliance here is in the honesty of Hillage’s preserving his complex keyboard wizardry to birth what could be the first prog-punk hybrid. In “New Age Synthesis” Hillage manages to pull from post-punk’s angular minimalism and disco’s calculated strut while staying true to his own musical language. A loud ringing gong opens the title-track with a sly wink before robotic singing gets the vocoder treatment while thumb-slaps on the bass start the party.