AHRKH – Beams From a Spiritual Panorama

So my epic wishlist on Bandcamp has exploded since I re-discovered online radio late last year, but every now and again I need to remind myself of the stuff that’s been on there for absolutely ages.

So I was listening to the radio show that Golden Ratio Frequencies do, and it wasn’t doing a lot for me. It was full of the more new-age-bromide-y ambient music that I ultimately find a bit cloying. So I went to the aforementioned wishlist and scrolled right down to look for stuff that had been there ages and that I couldn’t really remember what it was, and I saw this, so I clicked on it and pressed play.

And got turned into a monged out vegetable. This is a very powerful piece of immersive and rather intense drone. I love it.

And then I noticed this was on the Golden Ratio Frequencies label, and I suspect is the man who does Golden Ratio Frequencies himself, who also is part of the Gnod family. They get everywhere!

Funny how circles close sometimes.

Dwellings – Power is Blind in Both Eyes

Despite my frequent claim that genres are essentially bullshit concepts, I kind of have to grudgingly admit that they can be handy as vague guidelines. Mainly because when I come across something like this which is absolutely nowt like the stuff I usually post (question: what is the stuff I usually post like? There’ll be an exam later) then I suppose I should be able to say what it is like. And with this, I don’t think I can. By that I mean that I am even more at a loss for descripttors than usual.

It’s probably dubstep adjacent, but more gnarly? Reminds me somewhat of Demdike Stare but, again, gnarlier? A bit like The Bug? Gah! But then, maybe there is no real handy label for this? I think that is ultimately the fate of all music, anyway.

I believe the cheeky chappy on the cover of this is also a member of Gnod, however. That I am confident in saying.

Marlene Ribeiro ~ Negra Branca – N.B. + Touched

This was in my Bandcamp wishlist for years, literally. I finally bought it a couple of months back after playing it again, and it has done seriously hard labour on my speakers since then.

I want to type the phrase ‘Marlene used to be in Gnod’ because I haven’t seen her listed on their more recent stuff. BUT – you listen to Faca do Inberno on this here album, and then you listen to Faca de Fogo from Gnod’s recent collaboration with João Pais Filipe and you tell me that the one isn’t a proto-type for the other. Go on. Can’t do it, can you? So maybe she’s still in Gnod.

Nova Express – Twenty One

I have a colleague at work with whom we discuss music fairly frequently and through each other we have discovered some good stuff over the years, although some of the stuff I’ve tried him on has been a bit hard for him to bear – he described Gnod as Pink Floyd having a bad trip after I played him Tony’s First Communion (one of the best pieces of music ever, imo), and said he’d rather pull his own teeth out than listen to Oneida again.

Anywho, a success story was a band called Appliance, who I’m sure you all remember from the beginning of this cursed millennium. He said to me that he couldn’t believe he’d missed them as he was well into that type of music then and he was familiar with all their contemporaries yet Appliance completely passed him by.

I feel somewhat that way about Nova Express, who I now know to have been around at that time too, though I didn’t then. And whilst I’m not going to claim that my journey into repetition and minimalism was complete by that time, it had certainly started and I’m convinced I would have done the listening equivalent of feasting on this stuff.

Be that as it may, I know it now, and I know it gladly.

Stara Rzeka and M. Takara – Live at CCSP

Both of these gentlemen have visited the ‘bergs before and by rights should probably visit more often but I’m not conscientious enough in doing new posts. Blame it on the new post-editing software which isn’t quite as intuitive as it claims itself to be.

So this release is a recording of a show they did after having only jammed for 90 minutes prior. The music itself is the best kind of improvisational maelstrom, hypnotic as all fuck. If you was down with the recent Gnod & João Pais Filipe collaboration, this may well be your thang.

Gnod & João Pais Filipe – Faca de Fogo

And since we’re talking about dudes who are on it, why don’t we add Gnod to the party?

This is where maelstromic trance goes dark. My only complaint is it ain’t long enough, but I don’t think it ever could be.

I’ve noticed I type less and less words with my posts these days. This can only be a good thing.

Self Help – Grand Hotel Ibis

People who have read this blog before may well have picked up on my long standing tendency to snark at music journalism, like I’m soooo much cooler (which actually I am, though that is irrelevant). (coolness is and always has been a bullshit concept). (concepts are and always have been over-rated). (this is what happens when writing a blog post is roughly the second conscious thing you do one morning after making a cup of coffee because you’ve remembered you actually get to start work a bit later today because reasons).

So anyway, because music journalists, I really didn’t want to like this album, as it contains man from The Quietus. To be fair to The Quietus, they are actually the least objectionable music publication by some distance, and I even read it sometimes. I hardly ever see the word ‘sophomore’ used when describing a ‘second’ album. This is to be encouraged. Also, other things.

Ponder for a moment what sort of mind listens to an album that he really didn’t want to like. Or don’t. Maybe working from home does funny things to you. Or maybe I actually listened because Tesla Tapes, because Gnod, because I just damn well listened to it.

It’s like nothing I can describe, which isn’t actually unusual in that regard. But it’s also brilliant. All four tracks are very different, and they’re all great.

Negra Branca @ Woodland Gathering 2018

I listened to this via The Quietus not long after it happened; only posting now because I’m posting it now.

The reason I listened to her is because she also plays with Gnod. This is not much like Gnod, albeit exactly what are Gnod like? They are like many things.

This put me in a trance, even though I was at work (that’s how I cope). I’ve just deleted several sentences where I tried to describe it. This is why I’ve given up trying to describe music using words.

 

 

The Final Age

I sold my halo. It broke the ice at parties, yes, but otherwise it was subsequently a hindrance.

Open systems in disguise as closed systems.

How did you cure those lunatics?
I let them run the asylum…

Gnod – Just say no…

In complete contrast to the previous two posts, here we have a whole heap of ‘AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!’ aimed right at your face.  And what a fine heap of grumpy-old-man stuff it is, too. Mind you, they’re probably a bit younger than me (I’m 46).

Gnod have made it their recent mission to try and re-politicise the alternative music scene. My own feelings on this are mixed because I have to admit I’ve never seen a tsunami turn back because of protesters on the beach, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be encouraging people to pull their heads out of their ****book feeds and actually look at the world around them and try to re-engage with other actual people, instead of relying on some commentator you will never meet to tell you that things are actually one way that suits them better than you. Also, people are actually nicer to each other when they talk to each other instead of when they argue on the internet, a pastime which only brings out one thing in people and that is the worst.

It reminds me in spirit of the last great outpourings of political music that I was aware of in the 1990s, particularly around the Criminal Justice Act that came in around that time. One of the main reasons for my mixed feelings is because the discontent from those times was one of the main reasons for Tony Blair, and I don’t believe I need to explain why we don’t want a repeat of all that, now. For all that we decry the current wave of so-called populism, it seems it was alright when he did it. But now I’m going all political and frankly I should leave that to this album, and I’m also giving the impression that I think political music is mistaken when I don’t actually think that at all.

So anyway, musically speaking, this is five tracks of loud done in the way that Gnod do loud, which is to say very well. There is rhythm and groove as is their wont, loud guitars, snarling guitars and vocals, and, er, well. You get the message.

I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if you weren’t to see this on a t-shirt or ten before the year is out.

But whilst we’re talking Gnod, I’ve also just discovered The Somnambulist’s Tale from 2012, which is completely at the opposite end of the sonic spectrum from this and demonstrates just how fucking good they have always been. And did you notice that I asterisked a particular web-resource, but left the word ‘fucking’ uncensored? Have it.