Gnod On The Wire Past The 5th Sun

Salford's best exponents of dark, dank, dirty psych drone (and funniest bastard alive Stewart Lee's fave band) Gnod have two recent releases of note that are damned (and killer).


First of all, we have Chaudelande Volume 2 which came out a few months ago on Tamed Records. The followup to Chaudelande Volume 1 (strangely...), this three track release is one tripped out motorik trip into the netherworld and back, guaranteed to tear a fraction of your soul away in the process. The grooves inherent in this album are insane - I never expected Gnod to reach these heady heights. I personally love 'Man On The Wire' (why didn't this soundtrack some portion of Kill List? Or maybe The Wicker Tree - that film mightn't have been such a dire disappointment otherwise...) and 'Entrance', but 'Genocider' is beautifully unrelenting also. They are so on song here that it is scary. You must get this - seriously.

Gnod - Man On The Wire


Then to make things interesting, along comes brilliantly destructive Irish label Trensmat (who have also put out sweet one-offs by the likes of White Hills, Evan Caminiti, Expo '70 and Cave) and and drops 5th Sun, a delectable slice of Gnodisms that works as a symmetrical trip into an exploding star. The flip side is '5th Dub', the closest these dark alchemists will ever get to being Massive Attack (and it's still solar systems in comparison). You can grab that one here.

Gnod - 5th Sun

One of the most underrated psych bands out there. Get on board.

Raven Steals My Hovering Resonance (Not Really)

Dammit, Raven Sings The Blues beat me to this by a day! Goes to show what wading through a backlog of music will do to ya. Still, RSTB is an amazing music blog, if you don't already frequent their page and delight in their delicacies, then you aren't living.

Sound Of Cobra put out a cool release by Cannibal Movie last year (word is that CM are bringing out a full length release this year - watch this space...), and now they have mixed blood with the ever excellent Expo 70 (AKA Justin Wright) for Hovering Resonance, a swirling, coalescing masterpiece of motorik haze. It is nuts how many releases of great consistency this dude puts out - it's hard to even ascertain where to start! But I think that this rivals anything he put out last year, including the Night Mist cassette he put out on Nurse Etiquette, or Inaudible Bicoastal Trajectory which was far spacier. This has a hedonistic bent that is yet somehow more palatable, and that isn't a detriment. There is a lot of playback value on this one. The krautrock drive underneath the title track in particular will have you coming back for more.


You can grab Hovering Resonance here - I highly recommend this one.

Expo 70 - Hovering Resonance