“I felt his breath on my back/I felt his claws around my neck,” snarls vocalist Inge Beckmann on curiously erotic electro-clash come-on “Two Wolves”. It’s a Jim Morrison-esque parable about the battle between the id and super ego, libidinal impulse and cerebral remorse... or not. Trying to pigeonhole (m)any of the thematic frequencies at play in Gong is Struck is perilous. Whether it’s cyber-Zen chant “Long Mantra” or grungy drum ’n’ bass siren call “Ascending”, it’s not just the “semantics of the soul” that Beckmann is channelling. It’s a per- formative seance with all things Uncanny. On the avant-pop puzzle “Seek to Find”, powered by Mr Sakitumi, she threads her noir cabaret croon over a narcotic cyber-tribal blues groove. On chamber piano lullaby “Stole the Moon” she serenades a string-shaded cabaret requiem for a shadowy operatic dream. Shit, she even has the chutzpah to attempt to defibrillate Margaret Singana’s Shaka Zulu theme song, “We are Growing”! It’s this dimension of the Undead that Lark’s witching sonic brew renders in the flux of their intuitive drift towards a truly alternative abyss. “We allow afflatus to move inside of us/To lose our wicked way,” crows Beckmann as Paul Rez (audio manipulations, guitar, keys), Fuzzy (basses, doudouk) and Sean Ou Tim (drums, percussion, sampling) implode the tripped-in sonic architectures of “Afflatus”. Divine inspiration, indeed.