Gnod - Chronicles Of Gnowt (Vol 1) (Solid Blue Vinyl + Obi Strip)

“I am only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation”

Susan Sontag once remarked. Sontag never had the chance to work out how she felt about Gnod, given she sadly left this earthly realm in 2004. Yet Gnod’s now twenty year journey through spiritual and audial exploration has been nothing if not that. Driven by relentless curiosity, magpie irreverence and a fierce countercultural imperative, their project has always refused to acknowledge all or any rules and boundaries, internal or external.

The latest adventure of this band may never have been intended to celebrate their two-decade anniversary, but as long-time Gnod member Paddy Shine notes, they don’t always have a lot of say in these matters – “I know that we didn’t plan it this way but perhaps it was always in the plan and we just didn’t know it” he notes cryptically. “I guess what I’m saying is that the Gnod thing seems to have its own energy now and certain things tend to take care of themselves”.

“We haven’t reflected too heavily on the twenty year mark and maybe we shouldn’t, but I’m glad we are marking it in true Gnod fashion by releasing too many albums” he laughs – indeed, what began as a trip into a residential studio setup in Hellfire Studios with producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, Black MIDI, Caroline) for six days resulted in more potent material than anyone bargained for.

“Working with Spud was probably the best studio experience we’ve had” Paddy notes.

“He was open to all our ideas, facilitated them the best he could and always had great suggestions. The vibe was right and things just flowed”. The end result has been three studio albums to be released over the next year. “This trilogy revealed itself to us in the studio” says Paddy. “We were hoping to get a good album out of the session and lo and behold we got three of the fuckers. It’s interesting that we did pretty much capture the full spectrum of the Gnod sound across all three”.

In fact, this intrepid first instalment of the ‘Chronicles Of Gnowt’ trilogy covers an alarming amount of sonic territory all on its own. Driven as always by the power of repetition as well as Gnod’s alchemical marriage of the maximal and the minimal, this album is imbued with a vivid focus that’s testimony to the chemistry of the sessions, coupled with a detailed and spacious production from Murphy that brings out the psychedelic sound worlds of the band in vivid colour.

This is a travelogue which delves into pastoral tranquillity (as on ‘Three Trees Parts 1&2’) just as adeptly as expansive Earth-tinged riff monoliths (‘All Tunnel No Light’) and just as formidably as the closing epic ‘Ekstasis’ – a hallucinatory vista where kraut-tinged experimentalism meets Swans-style intensity. Yet all the while, truly sounding like no one but Gnod.

Thus, the crooked path continues. Always unique, always changing, but forever refreshed, Now as ever a band to draw a myriad invocations from one chord.

Gnod’s only enemies in their psychic quest remain inertia and boredom. What’s more, there’s no end in sight.

1. Three Tree’s (Part 1)
2. Shadow Mirror
3. Neptune
4. Three Tree’s (Part 2)
5. All Tunnel No Light
6. Ekstasis