Gnod’s new album is reminiscent of anything from Popol Vuh to Coil but, says Luke Turner, this isn’t a contrary change in direction, but a sumptuous re-examination of what makes them so great
For those who know Gnod as purveyors of the sort of music that suits getting blasted and waving your arms around, new album Spot Land might at first come as something of a shock. 2022’s Hexen Valley was a trans-Pennine bad trip with hints of the later Fall-era’s sludgy intensity but with (given the title, appropriately) bad-vibes murk, as if Mark E Smith and Co’s Salford Van Hire transport had veered off into the brown gurgle of the River Calder after a gig at the Trades. Its successor is an almost bucolic contrast, a wander up to the Tops on a rare bright May spring day. Yet this isn’t a radical departure based on being bereft of ideas, but a dramatic evolution of their sound that retains every ounce of Gnod’s inquisitive nature and desire to progress. This richly textured album is an exercise in refinement; perhaps not minimalism, but certainly distilling the essence of Gnod to five tracks that within their quiet oddness lies as much (and perhaps even more) power than when the band are at their glorious noise rock biker-gang full-throttle excess.
Perhaps clues to this metamorphosis can be found elsewhere in Gnodland and Paddy Shine’s brilliant Moundabout project, an investigation into the ancient history of Ireland. An Cnoc Mór and Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones both flicked the exact same bit of my brain that gets set off while having a doze on top of a long barrow in the spring sun, or watching Phil knap a flint on an old episode of Time Team. For Spot Land, remarkably recorded in just four days in a Rochdale Mill, Shine took the helm as sole producer and mixer, and is the only member to play on all five tracks. He’s clearly brought some of Moundabout’s laid-back, esoteric historicism with him.
Where Hexen Valley ended with the chant of “waves of fear”, a disintegrating scream and rattle of drums being bludgeoned by bass feedback, Spot Land takes over Gnod’s journey with ‘Peace At Home’, a track of low murmuring bass, gently picked guitar, a simple hi-hat and what sounds like a U-Boat dive siren muted by a few hundred yards of the briny pushing things along, before male voices of a sampled Benedictine choir start to sing. The warm eddies of Gnod’s music embrace the voices, respond to them, but then there’s a slight stutter imposed, as if the monks have started shuffling to Gnod’s beat. The languid mood is deceptive – this is a cleverly, beautifully crafted piece of music.
Album fulcrum ‘Dream On’ is more abstract, odd little peep and poops on top of manly groans and murmurs sounding like knitted pink space beings The Clangers trying to wake up a drunk who’s sat on their moon. Again, though, it’s the pattering rhythm section that gives the track just as much energy as the heaviosity of most of Gnod’s recent work. ‘Khapal Bhati’ (Sanskrit for Shining Skull) is an exercise in the power of restraint, thumb piano tinkling like the water off ice in a cold winter sun, further grunts and murmurs in the background. There’s just so much space on this record – and what is psychedelia but a creative or mental space in which to allow the mind to expand?
The same goes for album closer ‘Pilgrim’s Progess’, which returns to the religious (and I used religious rather than spiritual here) sonic palette. It opens with the sound of Christians chanting in a church in Azores. You can hear the field recording hiss of a large room, quiet spoken voices in the background, and then the chant begins. You can almost smell that particular scent of an old church – damp stone, cool air from the heat outside, wood polish, candle wax, incense. It’s ever more transportive not just because of the recording, but the magic of how Gnod bring it into their own song. Their music enhances this source material, so the Christian pilgrims are bidden into a duet with desert guitar that blisters, scatters and fractures over a gentle rhythm that plods contentedly along. The effect is like an urgent philosophical discussion being carried on over a sun-baked pair of monastic thinkers psychedelically wrecked by their long trek over some blasted terrain.
I can’t think of much higher praise for this record than to say that if you’ve ever wished Popol Vuh hadn’t descended into new age guff after their peerless run of 70s albums, then this is for you – someone get Werner Herzog on the blower! Yet for anything you might want to compare this fantastic album to, be it Popul Vuh, Enya (just listen to the piano over drone on ‘Luz Natural’), an at-times jazzy take on Coil’s Cyclobe wing, even the likes of The For Carnation or Sunburned Hand of the Man, it is still undeniably part of the Gnod soundworld, still singularly themselves. Spot Land is one of those rare records that feels more and more alive with every listen, forever unfurling.
Gnod’s music is inspiring because the creativity feels so unforced, a group of people constantly using their own curiosity to push themselves creatively and challenge their audience too. It occurs to me that over the sixteen years we’ve been running The Quietus, Gnod have been one of the constants, part of our sonic firmament. Interestingly, they’re a group who almost do a tour of our writers, with different contributors getting different things from different records, responding to different elements within their sound. I’ve loved a lot of Gnod records in the past, yet Spot Land is the one that moves me to such an extent that on the evening I first acquired it, I couldn’t help but put it on repeat, listening like I might the tides. Keeping The Quietus going needs records like this and artists like Gnod to keep us inspired. Spot Land is a beautiful, joyous, reflective, thoughtful album that sits as a fascinating milestone in the journey of one of our most cherished groups.
