Gong are a rock band associated with the Canterbury scene. They incorporate elements of psychedelic rock, jazz and space rock into their musical style. The group was formed in Paris in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen and English vocalist Gilli Smyth. Band members have included Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Steve Hillage, Mike Howlett, Tim Blake, Pierre Moerlen, Bill Laswell and Theo Travis. Others who have played on stage with Gong include Don Cherry, Chris Cutler, Bill Bruford, Brian Davison, Dave Stewart and Tatsuya Yoshida.

Gong's 1970 debut album, Magick Brother, featured a psychedelic rock sound. By the following year, the second album, Camembert Electrique, featured the more progressive rock/space rock sound with which they would be most associated. Between 1973 and 1974, Gong released their best-known work, the allegorical Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, detailing the adventures of Zero the Hero, the Good Witch Yoni and the Pot Head Pixies from the Planet Gong.

In 1975, Allen and Smyth left the band, which continued without them, releasing a series of jazz rock albums under the leadership of drummer Pierre Moerlen. This incarnation soon became known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong. Meanwhile, Smyth formed Mother Gong while Allen initiated a series of spin-off groups, including Planet Gong, New York Gong and Gongmaison, before returning to lead Gong once again in 1990 until his death in 2015. With Allen's encouragement, the band decided to continue as a quintet comprising guitarist Fabio Golfetti, bassist Dave Sturt, woodwind player Ian East, guitarist and vocalist Kavus Torabi, and drummer Cheb Nettles. They released the album Rejoice! I'm Dead! in September 2016, followed by The Universe Also Collapses in 2019, Unending Ascending in 2023, and Bright Spirit in 2026.

In September 1967, Australian singer and guitarist Daevid Allen, a member of the English psychedelic rock band Soft Machine, was denied re-entry to the United Kingdom for 3 years following a French tour because his visa had expired. He settled in Paris, where he and his partner, London-born Sorbonne professor Gilli Smyth, established the first incarnation of Gong (later referred to by Allen as "Protogong") along with Ziska Baum on vocals and Loren Standlee on flute. However, the nascent band came to an abrupt end during the May 1968 student revolution, when Allen and Smyth were forced to flee the country after a warrant was issued for their arrest. They headed for Deià in Mallorca, where they had lived for a time in 1966.

In August 1969, film director Jérôme Laperrousaz [it], a close friend of the pair, invited them back to France to record a soundtrack for a motorcycle racing movie which he was planning. This came to nothing at the time, but they were subsequently approached by Jean Karakos of the newly formed independent label BYG Actuel to record an album, and so set about forming a new electric Gong band in Paris, recruiting their first rhythm section of Christian Tritsch (bass) and Rachid Houari (drums and percussion) and re-connecting with a saxophonist called Didier Malherbe whom they had met in Deià. However, Tritsch was not ready in time for the sessions and so Allen played the bass guitar himself. The album, entitled Magick Brother, was completed in October.

The reborn Gong played its debut gig at the BYG Actuel Festival (Festival d'Amougies [nl]) in the small Belgian town of Amougies, on 27 October 1969, joined by Danny Laloux on hunting horn and percussion, and Dieter Gewissler and Gerry Fields on violin, and was introduced to the stage by bemused compere Frank Zappa. Magick Brother was released in March 1970, followed in April by a non-album single, "Est-Ce Que Je Suis; Garçon Ou Fille?" b/w "Hip Hip Hypnotise Ya", which again featured Laloux and Gewissler. In October, the band moved into an abandoned 12-room hunting lodge called Pavillon du Hay, near Voisines and Sens, 120 km south-east of Paris. They would be based there until early 1974.

Houari left the band in the spring of 1971 and was replaced by English drummer Pip Pyle, whom Allen had been introduced to by Robert Wyatt during the recording of his debut solo album, Banana Moon. The new line-up recorded a soundtrack for Laperrousaz's movie, now entitled Continental Circus, backed poet Dashiell Hedayat [fr] on his album Obsolete, and played at the second Glastonbury Festival, later documented on the Glastonbury Fayre album. Next, they began work on their second studio album, Camembert Electrique, later referred to by Allen as "the first real band album". It established the progressive, space rock sound which would make their name, leading, in the autumn, to their first UK tour. However, by the end of the year Pyle had left the group, to be replaced by another English drummer, Laurie Allan.

Gong went through increasing line-up disruption in 1972. Laurie Allan left in April to be replaced by Mac Poole, then Charles Hayward and then Rob Tait, before returning again late in the year. Gilli Smyth left for a time, returning to Deià, Mallorca, to look after her and Daevid Allen's baby son, and was replaced by Diane Stewart, who was the partner of Tait and the ex-wife of Graham Bond. Christian Tritsch moved to guitar and was replaced on bass by former Magma member Francis Moze, while the band's sound was expanded with the addition of synthesizer player Tim Blake in late 1972.