Interview: Gnod
It wasn't intentional to bring out three volume series of albums on the twenty year anniversary, but that's kind of just how it's worked out.
Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol 1) in the latest album from the mighty Gnod and this first volume of a trilogy that will follow later this year and early next year, sees the band exploring new sounds and ideas in their own inimitable fashion in what is a sublime listening experience, of which Gnod are undoubtedly masters of. Gavin Brown had the pleasure of catching up with Gnod’s Chris Haslam and Paddy Shine to hear all about the sound and art of the new album, what is next for Gnod and celebrating their twenty year existence as a band.
E&D: Your new album Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol 1) has just come out. Is this record a celebration of your existence as a band?
Chris: Well, I suppose it is just because of the timing it’s coming out. But no, not really. We just went into the studio to record an album and just ended up having a good time and putting quite a lot of stuff down that we built up from playing live over the previous few years, down properly in the studio. So it just came about like that really. It wasn’t intentional to bring out three volume series of albums on the twenty year anniversary, but that’s kind of just how it’s worked out.
E&D: Do you always want to move forward and have a sense of self transformation with your music as well?
Chris: Yeah, again, that kind of just comes along quite unintentionally. It’s just whatever we’re doing at the time. I mean, we used to be a band that met up every weekend together, when we first started out twenty years ago, and it was something that we did for enjoyment, really, on our days off work. Now we kind of live in a lot of different places, so every now and again, we meet up and get together, and stuff comes out of that sometimes, or, if we’ve got gigs coming up on tours or something like that, we go in and rehearse for a few days, see what comes out. Sometimes, new stuff comes out. Sometimes we put that in the set, and that’s what happened with the tracks on the album, mostly it’s just stuff that was built up over the years, and also some improvised stuff as well that we came up with in the studio.
E&D: Did you ever think about releasing this as a triple album or did you want to split up?
Chris: I think when we were recording it, we knew we had more than one album, and by the end of it, we had three.
Paddy: I mean, we could have released it as a triple album, but why not do something a bit different and release it over the course of the year, to kind of stamp on the 20th year of the band being together. We did release a triple album in 2015, so we kind of did that already. We’ve done volume things before. Spot Land was Volume One and Two originally, but, yeah, it’s time. It was a three, and they were a few different styles, areas of musicality to explore that were quite distinct. Even though they were all recorded at the same time, it kind of it lent itself to three separate parts, rather than one whole part.
E&D: What have been the biggest influence on these recordings?
Chris: Ourselves and our experiences and just playing together. Some of the lads that we’ve been playing music with now, we’ve been playing with for a few years. The first 10 years, the lineup shrank and expanded. A lot of different lineup changes, and over the last 10 years, it’s become a bit more stable.
E&D: Is it more of a challenge with you living a bit more farther apart now?
Chris: Yeah and no, it’s kind of good in a way, because we have something to bring when we do get together, just like seeing it as a weekly thing meeting up.
Paddy: For me, it’s a bit frustrating, actually, because there are times where I’d like to get together with Chris and just piss around for hours. We used to do that a lot when we lived at Islington Mill, I just basically lived above our rehearsal space. So it was kind of a constant feature, which was great, but you know, everything happens as it should do. I think everything’s just evolving naturally as to how we work and what have you. But yeah, I do get a bit frustrated in regards to not being able to just have a jar, and sometimes I really just want to be in a room with all the lads making a fucking racket!
Chris: I still kind of get a taste of that because the other band I’m in, Holy Scum, some members are not doing that, so I get to do that a bit more often than we meet up say, with Gnod.
E&D: Does it feel like 20 years that Gnod have been a band?
Paddy: No, it’s like it’s all just become one gig and one rehearsal and one album, and it really has flown by. That’s not to say that there’s no high points, but in regards to time, really, it’s flown by. It’s weird, to think we’ve been out for twenty years, really, because it feels like we’re just getting started, like, I don’t think we’re jaded at all.
E&D: What have been some of those high points along the way?
Paddy: It’s a good question. I mean, we’ve been asked this before, and it’s good, because it got me thinking. I can say touring in Europe for the first time was amazing. That was a big high point. Learnt a lot from that. The first few years of touring in Europe was pretty wild, because we didn’t have a booking agent, so we were just going out on a whim, and we got ourselves into some really silly situations, like playing in a bar in Copenhagen that fit about 10 people doing a two night residency and getting paid in fucking cigarettes! Do you remember when fags came out and you could pop the filter? It was those fags, and we got about 500 menthol fags that you could pop the filter on, and it ended up becoming the I can smoke more than you tour, we called it. It that was ridiculous, but it was great craic. Actually, in those days to tour in Europe, we used to actually make more money busking on the street than we would at the actual shows. I had this instrument at the time, like a hanging drum instrument, and we go out with that, and a bunch of fucking shakers, like a bunch of absolute weirdos, sitting on the side of the street or in a park playing. But we had great craic. Eventually it picked up from doing that relentlessly. We were pretty relentless in going out and playing anywhere, doing anything. After Roadburn 2012 that first time we played, that’s when we got approached by a booking agent, but that was the highlight, being in Europe for the first time, playing and doing a residency with Faust, and the same with Charles Hayward from This Heat.
Chris: Surgeon as well.
Paddy: Tony Surgeon like, all these people who we listen to and love their music, and you could say that they were big inspirations and big influences, to suddenly be hanging out with them, chatting shit, playing music. One of the highlights of my musical career is with Faust. We were rehearsing in this theatre space, and we had cement mixers and fucking sledgehammers, and at one point during the rehearsal, we’re smashing this fucking cement mixer with a sledgehammer, and the cement is still kind of coated around the cement mixer, so it’s flying off everywhere, so after the rehearsal, I go and get a hoover, and I start hoovering up and fucking Jean-Hervé from Faust is like, “Shut up. Shut up. Stop, stop, everybody. Stop. Not you, Paddy, not you.” So I’m just fucking hoovering around this thing, and he’s just, “wow, yeah, I love the sound of a hoover.” Then we found out later on that actually he does love hoovers. He’s got about seven or eight or something in his house, and he uses different hoovers for different parts of his house because they sound better in different parts of his house. So it’s shit like that, that’s gold, or watching Faust do a sound workshop. I stumbled into it. I was running a bit late to it, and I walked in, and there was all these Portuguese kids being really animated and trying to, get sounds out of there, like ruffling their coats and stuff, and Jean-Hervé was orchestrating it. Walked in, and I was just like, this is fucking mental! They’re just so playful, really, and unserious but deep as well. It seems like surreal.
Chris: The other collaborations as well. There was Justin Broadrick. We collaborated with him, and also Damo Suzuki as well. We did a couple of gigs with Damo.
Paddy: The first gig with Damo was great. I mean, who hasn’t played with him at this stage, but first time we played with Damo, it was amazing. The fucker tried to steal my jacket though! I think I did give him my jacket in In the end, he just wouldn’t give it back to me.
Chris: We gave him that big, long coat.
Paddy: Yeah, that was my coat! But that was amazing, playing with Damo for the first time, definitely, What a warrior and a trooper that guy is.
E&D: Does it seem surreal, looking back about everything like that, making music with people you look up to?
Paddy: I remember at the time it being a bit surreal, for sure, especially like the first few hours or whatever of being with these people, you’re a bit like, holy shit. But then you kind of just realise, oh yeah, we’re all just here because we’re supposed to be here doing this thing. It’s really funny because the first time I met Charles Hayward, I fairly young when I was at one of his shows, he’d done one of his solo gigs, and I was enamoured with Charles, oh, this guy is the coolest fucking dude ever. I said to him after the shows, Charles man, adopt me as your son! He was like, fuck off! Years later, I’m fucking jamming with him and playing on stage with him and stuff. It’s funny, more than surreal!
E&D: Going back to the new album, can you tell us about the visuals that you’ve done for the song ‘All Tunnel No Light’?
Paddy: These days, it’s hard for people to sit through a nine minute long track and a nine minute long video, but I think the video is cool. Chris and his wife filmed all that stuff. It’s really cool. I think it works.
Chris: It’s mostly a place called Brimham Rocks, so all the huge rocks that you can see, that’s Brimham Rocks then there was another place nearby as well, called Druids Temple, which is like a folly that was built, they think around 1700. It’s definitely been put together, only a few hundred years ago, but it looks kind of ancient, and you can go and visit there. It’s cool.
Paddy: I guess the track is just quite different from anything else we’ve released. That track, and ‘Shadow Mirror’, they were the two tracks we went with that we thought, people might not have heard this side or not before, that’s why it’s always nice to be able to use them as your lead tracks for an album, to give people a taste of something fresh.
E&D: How was the experience of working with John ‘Spud’ Murphy on the album and how did that come about?
Paddy: Yeah, it was great. We’ve known him for a while and seen him around on the circuit, and he’d been asking us to get in with him. He’s like, I want to record now, and this has been going on for quite a few years, but it just never happened, until it happened, and he was good enough to cater for us and put some time away to be able to work with us for a full week. So the experience of working with him is amazing. I mean, there’s a reason why he is so good at what he does and that he’s now getting to be well known for what he does, because he’s fucking really good at it, and a producer/engineer role, he’s absolutely on it, and he knows how to hold space in a studio. He knows how to get the best out of people. He knows when it’s time for a break. He’s just really good to work with, and he’s also very inventive. In his studio, he’s got lots of toys, and he could just disappear behind the desk for a bit and then return with some fucking sheet metal and a Japanese banjo and a fucking anchor or something and be like, right, this is what this track needs, a bit of anchor!
E&D: Have you got plans to work with him again in the future?
Paddy: Oh, i’d absolutely love to, I wouldn’t ever rule that out.
E&D: Can you tell us about the influence of surrealist artist João Alves on the trilogy?
Paddy: Wow, I met João Alves in Portugal in 2021, maybe, and I remember I first went to his house and his house was basically like a giant living artwork, nearly every surface was covered in these kind of surrealist stuff that he does, and then all of his paintings, and I was blown away. I always thought, fucking hell I would love to have used some of his artwork or get him to do something with us. And, yeah, his style is really cool. It’s symbolic, what would you call it? Symbolic, surrealism? I don’t know how to label art, but his style is fucking awesome. And it just so happened that, lgoing through some of his paintings and seeing them, and there was three specific paintings you’ve only seen one, you’ll see the other two as the other volumes come out, just worked perfectly for the albums together. I’m really happy and honoured that he was willing to let us use his artwork.
E&D: How was the experience of working with White Hills and MC Sissi on music over the past couple of years?
Chris: With the White Hills thing, it was great to perform the stuff that was written so long ago and never really performed at the time with them. So, it was good to go out and do that with them. Got some really good shows for that, like Roadburn.
Paddy: It was really good to go out and meet these people who really loved that album. You know, that album was originally released in 2010 and some people just really connected with it. And finally getting to go out play that for those people, make them really happy to see it and to meet them afterwards, and hear people being like, Oh, this album is one of my favourites. I’ve got every fucking reissue of it. I’ve got this, and you’re just like, wow, who would have ever have thought that it will have an impact on people’s listening habits so much. Dave W. and Ego Sensation are real pros, man. They’re really good at what they do. It was great to play with them, and also to have fun, we were doing Neil Young covers. Some nights, we’d finish the show with ‘Cortez The Killer’ and we started playing a cover version by Träd, Gräs & Stenar, which means trees, grass and stones, they’re a Swedish band from the 60s, going up until, maybe early 2000s so we were doing a cover of that, and that’s all happened naturally while we were on the road. We were having fun as well. It was good to play with them, they’re mean players. Dave’s such a mean guitarist. Really, I could have just stood there with my guitar turned all the way down, just miming, and we would sound great!
Chris: The MC Sissi stuff, that’s Paddy’s wife, so that collaboration was really good to do because she came out with it, she fucking brought the bacon on that!
Paddy: I was pissing around at home, putting some stuff together, and sent it to Chris, and he put some stuff down, sent it back to me. And I was like, oh yeah, this is pretty cool. I said to the missus, stick those headphones on, and I just got a microphone, and she started just riffing away. I press record, and we did that for an hour, listen back to it. I was like, wow, we got a fucking album there! It was great performing with her, because me and Chris, we were not even really on stage. We were at the side, just making this music happen, and it was her performing, and it was great getting to watch that. To do what she does is just like, wow. I don’t think I’d have the neck to do it because she’s improvising, and she’s really exposed up there, just doing, doing weird shit!
E&D: Having done so many collaborations in the past, who would you love to collaborate with in the future?
Paddy: Honestly, I’m not really that bothered. Who would be a l dream collaboration?
Chris: Sunburned Hand of the Man.
Paddy: Oh, yeah. Now there you go. It would be amazing if we got to be in a room with Sunburned Hand of the Man. I went to America with one group I have with a friend of mine, a little duo called Moundabout. We went touring in America two summers ago, and we got to hang out and jam with the Sunburned, and that was a fucking absolute buzz. Those guys are fucking hilarious. They’re another crew that are extremely funny but extremely deep, and they’ve managed to do that at the same time. Wolf Eyes. I’d be up for Wolf Eyes as well.
E&D: With Your album Just Say No to the Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, did you get much hostility due to the title of the album from any right wing goons?
Paddy: Only online. 2016 was a very, very different time, l thought politics could make a difference, and that the left were maybe the good guys, whereas, now, in my opinion, it’s pretty obvious that the left and the right, as far as politics go, mainstream politicians up there calling the shots, they’re all the fucking same. They all fucking work for the same thing, which is to fucking rip everybody off and make a lot of money and make sure that they’re all right and work on behalf of whatever shady fucking oligarch or whatever it is that’s behind it all. That is my opinion, anyway. We did get shit for it, but there was some fair points made by some people that said, well, what’s the difference between the left and the right? Because they’re kind of the same, really. For example, look at England now, right? You’ve got Keir Starmer in there. I mean, is that guy any better than the Tories that have been in for the last 20 years, or whatever, I don’t fucking think so. Politics isn’t the answer, and that’s what the album title was about, really.
Chris: The music on the album was like a punk album. I was trying to think of an anarcho punk title like that, which is a kind of blown out one. I think it did its job. I think it made it a talking point, because a lot of the comments that we get are basically some people saying, oh, that’s naive, and we’re like, Well, yeah, but it’s not meant to be. So for some people, that’s right on the money, there’s an irony in there that’s lost as well, because just say no, is a government instruction. So it’s almost like the government saying, this is your enemy, or this is your focus, or there’s more to it than meets the eye. It is a piece of art. I think that just that title, it’s perfect. It’s like the thing on Kurt Cobain’s guitar. You know, as beautiful as a rock in a cops face It’s just the slogan that resonates in whatever you want it to say, really.
Paddy: I think it’s really interesting, that 10 years ago, that album title was up and fuck me, the world has changed so much in that 10 years. It’s like things still seemed to make sense a little bit back then, I think even though it was crazy, things like that the title for that album was announced the day that Donald Trump got inaugurated into office, by complete coincidence. So it was coincidence, and it went viral. But just because of that, because of Trump, and maybe 2016 was kind of the beginning of where reality started to get really wavy and fucking weird, and now we’re in 2026 and it’s like, it’s a fucking simulation, right? I mean, what the fuck is this?
Photo by Jon Perry
