Early on in the history of Gnod, one blog reported that this mysterious Mancunian collective took their name from an acronym abbreviating "Global Network Of Dreams." But the band themselves wasted little time dispelling this rumor. "Feel like we should point out that that's not where we got our name," they clarified. "If Gnod stands for anything, it stands for the universal god of fuck all."
Since forming in 2006, Gnod has always struggled free of any attempts to pigeonhole or label them, exceeding and warping expectations at every turn in a ceaseless mission to create and confront. No sooner had they carved out a reputation with fans of psychedelic rock and drone by virtue of mind-flaying records like 2010's White Hills-collaboration Gnod Drop Out With White Hills II and the fiery two-volume Chaudelande (2011-2012) than they chose to dispense with guitars and drums altogether and pursue an uncompromising electronic setup, with scant care for anyone who was confused or alienated in the process, and with less regard for escaping an overcrowded and limited scene than simply doing whatever they pleased. Yet once 2015's sprawling Infinity Machines made its presence felt, Gnod were suddenly stripped back to a tight, angular rock outfit for the following year's harsh and politically charged Mirror, wherein garage-band intensity and dub abstraction intertwined.
Yet even while transforming their own sound and output faster than almost anyone outside of their inner circle can easily understand, Gnod have never strayed far from a central vision, with a fierce countercultural drive, an anarchic spirit, and a visionary hunger for expression fueling a prodigious work-rate from an ever-evolving line-up. While Paddy Shine, Chris Haslam, and Marlene Ribeiro have been present at every stage of the journey, a total of nearly 50 musicians have been a part of the collective along the way, unified by its psychic charge and open-minded, inclusive, yet uncompromising approach.
A crucial watermark in the band's life came when they moved into the Islington Mill, an arts space and venue in Salford, England. The ethos of the space soon became simpatico with the collective's outlook; indeed, soon thereafter the band founded Tesla Tapes, a label with which they release solo and collaborative work. A relentless focus on collaboration has also seen Gnod work with everyone from Charles Hayward to author John Doran, Radar Men From The Moon, and Surgeon. Their touring schedule has been unforgiving and formidable, alongside festival work and commissions too numerous and illustrious to list, with the collective as comfortable working on a soundtrack for Jodorowsky's unmade version of Dune at the Cork Film Festival as embarking on a program as artists-in-residence at the 2017 Roadburn festival.
With the April 2017 release of what is arguably the band's most singular and startling album, Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, the ire and idealism of this unique outfit have never burned brighter. Call them the most consciousness-expanding punk rock band in the world, or the most monochrome and nihilistic psychedelic one -- call them what you like in fact, but Gnod will remain everything you can imagine, yet nothing more than those four letters.
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"It seems like we are heading towards even more unsettling times in the near future than we are in at present," reckons Chris Haslam of Gnod. "2016 is just the beginning of what I see as the establishment's systematic destruction of liberalism and equality as a reaction to the general public's loss of faith in their system." Charged by this outlook, Gnod's new album, Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, represents a hitherto uncharted level of antagonism and adversarial force for the band - an artistic statement as righteous, fervent and direct as its title. "On the surface it could almost seem like there's no political art movement out there to oppose what's happening, but there is - we know there is," adds the band's Paddy Shine. "Maybe that movement is struggling to find its voice as a cohesive whole right now but that will change." Fueled by their militant drive and unyielding ardor, Just Say No refracts Gnod's harsh and repetitive riff-driven rancor through a psychotropic haze of dubbed-out abstraction, with Paddy's incendiary vocal delivery to the fore. Gnod - fiercely independent, never comfortable in one place artistically for any duration of time, always with their coordinates set on uncharted territory and the next challenge ahead, and delivering a monument of ire and iconoclasm.
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LP version. "It seems like we are heading towards even more unsettling times in the near future than we are in at present," reckons Chris Haslam of Gnod. "2016 is just the beginning of what I see as the establishment's systematic destruction of liberalism and equality as a reaction to the general public's loss of faith in their system." Charged by this outlook, Gnod's new album, Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, represents a hitherto uncharted level of antagonism and adversarial force for the band - an artistic statement as righteous, fervent and direct as its title. "On the surface it could almost seem like there's no political art movement out there to oppose what's happening, but there is - we know there is," adds the band's Paddy Shine. "Maybe that movement is struggling to find its voice as a cohesive whole right now but that will change." Fueled by their militant drive and unyielding ardor, Just Say No refracts Gnod's harsh and repetitive riff-driven rancor through a psychotropic haze of dubbed-out abstraction, with Paddy's incendiary vocal delivery to the fore. Gnod - fiercely independent, never comfortable in one place artistically for any duration of time, always with their coordinates set on uncharted territory and the next challenge ahead, and delivering a monument of ire and iconoclasm.
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LP version. Just as dramatically as their restless disposition morphed their sound to a binary-driven direction for their last work, now Gnod strip their electronic setup to a viscous attack, as redolent of the primal punishment of early Swans, as the angularity of prime Public Image Ltd, yet shot through with a mercurial power and fiery intensity that could come from no-one else. The opening title-cut of Mirror seethes with lithe energy and dubbed-out vitality, whilst elsewhere the eighteen-minute closing track "Sodom & Gomorrah" may be the most dystopian piece of music the band have yet created; a harrowing yet fiercely compelling colossus of bleak abjection. "The tracks were pretty much written on the road in May 2015" elaborates Gnod's Paddy Shine. Reflecting and refracting the uncertainty of a darkening era, Mirror is a work of bold reinvention and raw renewal, sculpting chaos and discord into a formidable statement of intent. Only one thing is certain - wherever Gnod choose to go next, their ire and inspiration blaze as brightly as ever.
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Just as dramatically as their restless disposition morphed their sound to a binary-driven direction for their last work, now Gnod strip their electronic setup to a viscous attack, as redolent of the primal punishment of early Swans, as the angularity of prime Public Image Ltd, yet shot through with a mercurial power and fiery intensity that could come from no-one else. The opening title-cut of Mirror seethes with lithe energy and dubbed-out vitality, whilst elsewhere the eighteen-minute closing track "Sodom & Gomorrah" may be the most dystopian piece of music the band have yet created; a harrowing yet fiercely compelling colossus of bleak abjection. "The tracks were pretty much written on the road in May 2015" elaborates Gnod's Paddy Shine. Reflecting and refracting the uncertainty of a darkening era, Mirror is a work of bold reinvention and raw renewal, sculpting chaos and discord into a formidable statement of intent. Only one thing is certain - wherever Gnod choose to go next, their ire and inspiration blaze as brightly as ever.
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Salford, England-based Gnod's Infinity Machines explores a unique vision informed by experimental élan and metaphysical intensity. In an era in which the word "psychedelic" too often tends to signify a reductive and retrograde rag-bag of second-hand shapes, it was in Gnod's nature to venture forth in search of new and expanded sonic terrain. At first, this led them to pursue a purely electronic sound in the live arena, yet as they knuckled down to chronicle this expansion and experimentation for posterity, it became clear that a mixture of live instrumentation and binary audial research would be the path that would prove most fruitful. Thus began the process that would ultimately produce these recordings, and a far-reaching mission that would result in uncanny crepuscular atmosphere locking horns with sinister electronic intensity. Infinity Machines traverses between and beyond a variety of different headspaces, from the bleak to the beatific; yet, while touching on nocturnal jazz, soothing yet unsettling ambience, menacing aggro-industrial battery, and opiated bliss-out alike, it's shot through with an undercurrent of fiery countercultural zeal and small-hours revelation, as if the hive-mind of their home collective had manifested itself on disc. Tracks were put together from an initial blank canvas, and as the band themselves emphasize, "We got pretty tactical in the approach. We have certainly noticed that the emphasis has shifted from full on 'throw everything at it' Gnod vibes to a more stripped spacious sound which was not fully intentional but more of a natural progression."
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2015 repress. Triple LP version. Salford, England-based Gnod's Infinity Machines explores a unique vision informed by experimental élan and metaphysical intensity. In an era in which the word "psychedelic" too often tends to signify a reductive and retrograde rag-bag of second-hand shapes, it was in Gnod's nature to venture forth in search of new and expanded sonic terrain. At first, this led them to pursue a purely electronic sound in the live arena, yet as they knuckled down to chronicle this expansion and experimentation for posterity, it became clear that a mixture of live instrumentation and binary audial research would be the path that would prove most fruitful. Thus began the process that would ultimately produce these recordings, and a far-reaching mission that would result in uncanny crepuscular atmosphere locking horns with sinister electronic intensity. Infinity Machines traverses between and beyond a variety of different headspaces, from the bleak to the beatific; yet, while touching on nocturnal jazz, soothing yet unsettling ambience, menacing aggro-industrial battery, and opiated bliss-out alike, it's shot through with an undercurrent of fiery countercultural zeal and small-hours revelation, as if the hive-mind of their home collective had manifested itself on disc. Tracks were put together from an initial blank canvas, and as the band themselves emphasize, "We got pretty tactical in the approach. We have certainly noticed that the emphasis has shifted from full on 'throw everything at it' Gnod vibes to a more stripped spacious sound which was not fully intentional but more of a natural progression."
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Gnod's Chaudelande Vol. 1 & 2 (2011& 2012) vinyl-only albums on Tamed Records have become a thing of infamy as two of the greatest slabs of beat-driven, shamanistic space-noise to have been released over the past few years and Rocket Recordings is proud to bring these two mammoth LPs together for the first time on CD. The collective that is Gnod has risen out of the DIY ethic of Manchester's Islington Mill. Central to the ethic is an alternative approach to musical creativity and freedom of expression with no regard to established opinions. Gnod is a state of mind. Those who seek Gnod, will find Gnod -- the universe is centered on neither the earth nor the sun, it is centered on Gnod. Recorded in Studio Chaudelande, France, Chaudelande takes Gnod's convulsive vision, straps on electrodes, charges the amps, then overstimulates the vital organs as a torrent of contorted sounds akin to the likes of PiL, Hawkwind, and Butthole Surfers ignite like an arc-flash, repetitive blaze. The epic pilgrimage that is Chaudelande will take the listener on a ride through the narrow chinks of the cavernous mind in the frenzied spirit of This Heat, Sunburned Hand Of The Man and the repetitive beats of Krautrock via Wax Trax. So come join the cult that is Gnod's Chaudelande, as once again the band deliver another jolt to the unsound mind.
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Brothers and sisters, to prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries of Gnod, let us call to mind our sins. We believe in one Gnod, Gnod Almighty, makers of heavy black slab on Earth. We believe in one Chord, seamless, sublime, the one and only sound of Gnod, eternally begotten of the marcher. Gnod from Gnod, light from light, true Gnod from true Gnod, begotten, not made, of one Being with the maker; through Them all riffs were played. For us and for our salvation They came down from Manchester; by the power of Tony's (un)limit, They came to reincarnate and made the last disco'd beat. Tony's First Communion, if you choose to be blessed by this record, is the first reception of the Sacrament on vinyl; this long-standing favorite has been celebrated over centuries of incarnations and Rocket are proud to release its rite of passage. The ceremony of this Communion lasts 20 minutes and 2 seconds. On the second side, Gnod rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; They ascended into noise upon this Earth and were seated at the right hand of the Vatican. This 13-minute holy doctrine sees Gnod take away the sins of the world; it cleanses the incense (the in-sense-out-sense) from the all-seeing (third) eye, like a Faustian Butthole Surfers sharing bread with Shit & Shine and John Carpenter turning water into wine. Some ceremonies owe their institution to purely physical reason; for Gnod, it's the mystical reason that They represent. INGNODWETRUST is founded on honor and soul, They for one are finally washing their hands with downcast eyes.
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