Listening to Gnod in Asda. Listening to Gnod in Lidl and Aldi. Listening to Gnod in the park, staring up at the squirrels in the trees. Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol 1) finds the band operating in a vaguely pastoral vein. Mostly instrumental, quite steady in pace, even meditative. I’ve been listening to it a lot on my headphones when out and about, it’s an agreeable companion. Up the prettier end of the Gnod garden. As those parentheses imply, it is the first part of a trilogy they’ll be releasing over the next year.
In their defence, they don’t seem to have planned it that way. So we’re not facing some kind of pompous epic saga that couldn’t possibly be constrained by the run time of a humble album. At least, I don’t think so. The band booked a week in the studio with John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, OXN, caroline, Black Midi) hoping to emerge with enough material for an album and ended up with three. Not bad going. They also don’t appear to have paid much attention to this trio of albums coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the band.
Twenty years of Gnodding (Gnoddery? Gnoddage?) It speaks well of them that they remain focused on the future more than the past. How many bands are out this summer touring to celebrate two decades since they had a good idea/made a decent record? Bound to be a bunch of ‘em, always is. Scoundrels. Not Gnod. That said, the trilogy apparently takes in the full spectrum of their sound and so I guess Rowdy Gnoise Gnod and Gnob-twiddling electro-Gnod are still to come. I would say Volume 1 here is closest to Spot Land in overall mood, without sounding all that much like it.
It is, very slightly, a game of two halves, the first being bookended by the sleepy guitar drift of parts 1 & 2 of ‘Three Trees’ which are unassuming, laid back in their charms. ‘Shadow Mirror’ has a nice moody groove about it and a vocal that reminded me unfortunately of Sting. Yeah, sorry. I got past it, I’m sure you can too. The two longer tracks that make up the second half are the real winners of the set. The atmospheric ‘All Tunnel No Light’ is spacious and slow in the manner of Earth, while ‘Ekstasis’ locks into a steady Swans groove. Despite these obvious avant rock inspirations both tracks are great. This is, perhaps, Gnod at their gentlest, but they’ve not mellowed out.
