29 Apr 2016

Necro Dethmort - The Capsule(Mighty new album by ND, reminds us of a more psyched out Under the skin...from motorik grooves to pure minimalism - a sonic journey of an album)Necro DethmortH.U.M. - Trinity Way(Debut album of psyched out grooves n'noise from this great trio - an album like nothing you have never heard of before)H.U.M.JO+TL / Gnoomes - Repetitions(Each remix each other with ear spasming effects - plus 4 other stunning tracks on vinyl)JO+TL / GnoomesGoat - I Sing in Silence(Great new two track 7" by the mighty Goat...nice grooved out lovelyness)GoatHey Colossus - All Humans (Are Losing Control)(Great three track tape - perfect companion release to last years stellar albums)Hey ColossusLay Llamas - Rite of Passage / The Big Calm Sea of Transition(Fuzz groove track RoP is off their vinyl reissue of their debut tape and The BCSoT is off their latest split tape with Tetuan...you need both!)Lay LlamasTräd, Gräs & Stenar – Box set(Blissed out psych greatness)Träd, Gräs & StenarLifetones - For a Reason(Great album of Pablo'esque dubbed out grooves with shades of Eno, Wyatt, kraut and disco from This Heat's Charles Bullen)LifetonesVarious - Can't You Hear Me: 70s African Nuggets(Nice comp of afro grooves, some killer, some filler - some you will know, some you won't)Chris ZebbyOrnette Coleman – Skies of America(Free Jazz with the London Symphony Orchestra...seeing the amazing film 'Ornette Coleman – Made in America' got us revisiting this great album)Ornette ColemanLanding - Wave Lair(Lovely droning synths/guitars and electronic kosmiche beats...one for you Gnoomes fans)LandingSkeppet - Den Nya Kusten(More great Swedish kosmiche groove psych on Not Not Fun)SkeppetCat Le Bon - What's Not Mine(VU sounding psych pop from her great new Beefheart'ian sounding album)Cat le bon

Flowers Must Die - Flowers Must Die(Their great first album...Circle meets Necks meets Hills psyched out jams)Flowers Must Die

The Fall - Serum​(Dirty​ Fall track, just a great monster, fuzzy electronics and guitars with MES trademark vocals off prob their best album The Unutterable where all tracks are amazing)The FallCan - Live (bootleg)​(Rodger from legendary ex-Bristol Record Shop 'Revolver' hooked us up with 2 Live CAN gigs on cassette, some great version of Vitamin C and an amazing Arabian piece.)---

'GNOD! Fucking GNOD! I’d been waiting since November 20th 2014, and the GNODOROWSKY event at Cork Film Festival, to reignite this tryst… If TAU are about the escapism, and The Altered Hours about the boomtown-angst, then GNOD and particularly, their Hydra-like figurehead Paddy Shine, are the embodiment of Cúchulainn’s warp-spasm. GNOD truly are a “happening” in every sense of the word, combined with a “human be-in” – you FEEL them, just as much as you see or hear them. I recently reviewed their latest album ‘Mirror‘, which you can read here. If we really do, as Robert Anton Wilson suggested, inhabit our own, “self-referential reality tunnel”, then I can only thank my lucky stars, that GNOD occupy that temporal conduit with me.

I am already grinning like a demented Cheshire Cat, at the prospect of this year’s Eindhoven Psych Lab which boasts, ‘RMFTM meets GNOD: Temple ov BBV (Audio Test 005.epl16). I saw this pairing deliver an incendiary, synapse shredding, impromptu collaboration, along with Terminal Cheesecake, at the inaugural Psych Lab – just what they are going to come up with, following some detailed planning, is anyone’s diabolikal guess! From GNOD’s Lisbon Psych Fest closing setlist.....

It reads:Gnod - Freq - Album Review - 28 April 2016On the back of last year’s Infinity Machines double comes this dinky three tracker, the traumatic jazz of yore siphoned into some gloriously sculpted discord – 36 minutes that are seriously pissed off.A notion that gathers momentum on the slinky low-slung beginnings of the opener – a Jah Wobble dub, all languid and wanting. “There’s too many faces in the mirror!”, exclaims Paddy. “I can’t decide which one a want to wear today”. His vocals swimming a rich amniotic custard, a sense of the ever-encroaching world weighting heavy. The words tightening and the music darkens to a sense of futility – the austerity autopilot that continues to tear away at the fabric – the blind troupe of terrorism, the fucked over, the forgotten. All finger-spinning the music’s contours pitted in steady drummed thumps, a murmuring shadow fork-tonguing every word to glinting eyes of fret...Read the rest here: Freq---

We have two bands playing this years Desert Fest in Camden London this weekend.Teeth of the Sea plays the Quietus stage in the Black Heart at 8:15pm on Friday night – don't mis them, the band are on fire live at the moment.Then on Sunday – Necro Deathmort take the Electric Ballroom stage at 5pm, treating teh audience to a taster of the new album.Here the track Crux, from the new Necro Deathmort album aboveTickets can be bought from here: Desert Fest---

26 Apr 2016

Hey Colossus and Gnod are amongst a great selection of bands on this double LP record, all proceeds go towards the relief effort from the recent Eartquake in NepalMore info about this album and how to buy the ltd 2xLP visit here: For Nepal---

25 Apr 2016

Goat – “I Sing in Silence” If there was a music prize awarded to the most consistently fascinating experimental fusion band on the planet, Swedish band Goat would win it every time. There is just something about this band’s ability to stretch the limits of the experimental genre in a way that never fails to be both surprising and rewarding. On this latest 7” release, “I Sing in Silence” (which, by the way, is not what the song is about!), singer Christian Johansson has again concocted a magical potion of trippy psychedelic indie rock that will blow your mind. Yes, it even has flutes. Not many bands can use flutes in their music and make it sound good, but Goat gets away with it. This song is paired with an instrumental B-side track and is available for pre-order from the group’s Bandcamp page.I Sing in Silence releases May 27 via Rocket Recordings and Sub Pop Records. Goat has a handful of summer dates scheduled, including festivals in the UK and Belgium.See the full piece here: The Revue---

24 Apr 2016

23 Apr 2016

Excited to announce that we have Goat, Gnoomes and Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation tracks on the new MOJO cover mount CD.The magazine says:MOJO PRESENTS… THE NEXT PROJECTED SOUND OF 2016Inside this issue’s luxe card wallet, you’ll find we’ve taken a leaf out of cover star Syd Barrett’s kaleidoscopic book, bringing together a host of new psychedelic visions. Take a step into the next dimension with 14 tracks from Cate Le Bon, Flying Saucer Attack, Goat, Heron Oblivion, Black Mountain, Thee Oh Sees, Fuzz and more!Find out more here: MojoAlso, in the issue, you will see Goat's new single I sSing in Silence sitting in their monthly playlist---

Watch this video (via Vice) for the Lay Llamas track Rite of Passage – taken from their new S/T LP on Backwards, which is a first time on vinyl reissue of their debut tape. The tape that originally pricked our ears up to their tropical psych.You can preorder the album here: BackwardsAnd talking of tapes...Lay Llamas have just announced a split tape with the band Tetuan.You can listen to it here: Lay LlamasNot sure where you can buy it, but I am sure it is easy to find, but be quick as I doubt they will be around for long, this is the sleeve image:

20 Apr 2016

It reads:GNOD – ‘MIRROR’Gnod‘s sleeve note for Mirror says it all – “Self-Revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real “you” never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces” – Shashi Deshpande.Janus is your friend, if he is not then he is truly an enemy to be feared…Gnod return to the fray with their snapshot of a disenfranchised, lemming-like, Great British kiss-off. Only those ignorant or selfish or just not old enough, to have learned the painful lesions of the Thatcher years, would be foolhardy enough to embark on not one, but two terms under a crushing Tory yoke. Mirror despairingly documents this public myopia.Finding reanimation in disintegration, Gnod continue to evolve, phoenix-like, breathing fire to stoke the melting pot that is Islington Mill, re-emerging anew from this latter-day Dagda’s cauldron...Read the rest here: SOM---

19 Apr 2016

We are excited to announce that we are releasing the new album by psych-techno-drone duo Necro Deathmort.The new album The Capsule is released on 3 June on ltd LP, CD and DL. Preorders from here: Rocket BandcampSee what the Quietus say about it here: The QuietusThe press release reads:NECRO DEATHMORTTHE CAPSULEIt looms into view through the fog. much like a metaphysical force from the celluloid revelations that dwell in our memories and haunt our subconscious. A twisted morass of circuitry and flesh, binary chill and visceral barbarism. Necro Deathmort have created a monster, and it’s both a malevolent and magical thing to behold. It’s name is The Capsule.This two-man aural manifestation came to life towards the end of the last decade, starting originally in the words of co-conspirator Matthew Rozeik “as an abortive attempt to do a ‘regular’ rock band, born from jamming in studio downtime when our drummer was AWOL” Drawing on influencesranging across the spectrum from Ed Rush & Optical to Old Man Gloom and from Autechre to Neurosis, he remembers that the unspoken objective for himself and cohort AJ Cookson was “to make electronic music that was as heavy as doom metal, with absolutely filthy bass.”Moreover, the duo have proven frighteningly prolific, releasing a total of ten releases both on Distraction records and on Rozeik’s own Extreme Ultimate label, which arrive at a wide variety of tense and transcendental mental landscapes. Yet The Capsule marks the band’s first for RocketRecordings, and it’s a step yet further into the terrifying vacuum of space. “We’ve stopped caring that each new release might alienate fans of a previous record” notes Rozeik wryly. “I think it’s contributed to the longevity of the band, as we have a large well of inspiration from which to draw.” True to form. whilst this album’s opener ‘In Waves’ maps out rhythmic terrain somewhere amidst krautrock groove and techno relentlessness, it’s not long before matters take a turn into the unearthly, with dreamlike extrapolations like ‘Mono/Serum’ - redolent of nothing so much as Mica Levi’s otherworldly soundtrack to Under The Skin - sharing space with the threatening momentum of the more overtly metallic ‘Moonstar’. Yet at all times The Capsule is a work of fierce cohesion and compelling intensity.Whilst there may be three words for death in this band’s initially playful name, Necro Deathmort have proven themselves well versed in infinite varieties of the macabre. What’s more, in The Capsule, no-on can hear you scream.Listen to the track Crux here:---

18 Apr 2016

As reported recently, Hey Colossus are releasing a three track tape and here is a video for the lead track made by the the bands frontman, Paul Sykes.And buy the tape here: BandcampThe band are heading out on tour around Spain and Portugal, see the dates here: Tour---

As the Gnod Mirror tour continues to destroy European stages in their wake – 'Get into this', gets into Gnod...it reads:Psychedelic Krautrockers Gnod to visit Buyer’s ClubAhead of their visit to Buyer’s Club later this month, Getintothis’ Mark Greenwood tries to get a handle on just what makes Gnod so unmissable.Defining the psychedelic is a complex, heterogeneous task, especially given a span of half century since the term came into usage. The psychedelic is more than a musical style that evokes a bewildering and sublime aesthetic – it is an ideology that emerges through an intelligent manipulation of art forms. The Salford collective known as Gnod are architects of a modern psychedelic, merging a series of montages, spoken texts and field recordings to assemble a delicate and ominously deep tapestry of strange melodies and stark rhythmic clusters.Gnod employ a post-minimalist sensibility to describe a 21st Century obsession with desire and affect, folding between paranoia and electro-acoustic ecstasy. Both frightening and divine, their latest releases move intelligently between genres and forms, shifting between bleak post-punk, sludge dub and driving Krautrock.Having seen Gnod on a least three occasions, Getintothis can warn you to expect the unexpected, to have your intellect challenged and your physical essence compromised. The collective are currently touring Europe in support of their latest masterwork Mirror and their presence in Liverpool, the last stop on the tour, promises to be as special as always.Read the full piece here: GIT---

17 Apr 2016

15 Apr 2016

This weekend see's the return of Record Store Day – and on it's eve The Economist has published a piece which includes an interview with Rockets very own Chris Reeder.It reads:Independent labels and record shops are falling out of love with Record Store DayEVERY Friday evening, Tom Fisher and Philippe Giron pack the shelves of Rat Records—a second-hand record shop in south-east London—with new stock. Once the shelves are filled, Messrs Fisher and Giron post photographs of the new arrivals on the shop’s Facebook page; a “Sneak Peak”, covering everything from classic jazz, rock and dance music, to obscure artists operating in niche genres. From 10am on Saturday, customers shuffle in and out. Guest DJs play records behind the counter, record buyers brush elbows as they root through the new selections, chatting with each other and the proprietors about records that are on display (and usually records that aren’t). This is business as usual; it feels like a gathering of local fans drawn together to browse, listen to, discuss and purchase music.April 16th will see thousands of independent record shops overflowing with customers as part of Record Store Day (RSD). Now in its ninth year, RSD sees music fans flock to independent music shops, forming long queues in the hope of snapping up limited-edition vinyl releases that form part of an official list released ahead…Read the rest here: The Economist—

14 Apr 2016

Optical Sounds Issue 10 is up for presale and features teh mighty GOAT on the cover.Also contains interviews with H.U.M, Hirviikolari, Necro Deathmort and many more great bands.The full list is:Goat, Earthless, Helios Creed, The Myrrors, Heron Oblivion, Trad Gras och Stenar, The Oscillation, Charles Hayward, Radar Men From The Moon, Het Droste Effect, Necro Deathmort, The Bevis Frond, The Left Outsides, HUM, Hirvikolari, Josefin Ohrn, Lola Colt, Disappears, The Presolar Sands plus a feature on the mighty TerrascopeIt also contains a exclusive 7" by the great The Myrrors: Optical Sounds---

11 Apr 2016

Sweden’s Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation and Russia’s Gnoomes released twooutstanding albums at the tail end of 2015, and we are pleased to be bringingyou this special split release entitled REPETITIONS.See what The Quietus say about here: The QuietusJosefin Öhrn + The Liberation’s side starts with a radio edit of their live favourite Green Blue Fields - a great slice of psychedelic disco pop that calls to mind a psyched out Blondie’s ‘Heart of glass’. Then for the first time on vinyl we have Lucid Sapphire – a punked up, motorik driven, rock stomper that first appeared as the bside of their digital only single Sunny Afternoon. The side is finished with a stunning cosmic-dance remix of their ‘hit’ single Take me Beyond by label mates Gnoomes .That leads us nicely into Gnoomes’s side which starts with Myriads Of Bees – a new version of the track Myriads which featured on their debut album Ngan! This new version sees the band strip the song back to a minimal kosmiche pulse with repetitive mind altering effects. Then we have for the first time on vinyl the radio edit of their ‘hit’ single Roadhouse, this is the version of the track that got them noticed by countless BBC 6 Music DJs. Then the finaltrack of the EP sees Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation return the ‘remix’ favour pushing the original motorik groove of Roadhouse into an addictive heavy kraut groove beat, overlaying it with head spinning synths and fuzz guitar.Listen to Gnoomes remix of Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation’s Take me Beyond here:

The EP is ltd to only 300 copies and comes in our 'house' Rocket disco-sleeve. You can preorder it from the Rocket Shop here: Bandcamp

-Both bands are going to be playing stages around Europe throughout 2016, confirmed shows so far are:Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation14 May – Orange Blossom Festival / Beverungen / Germany03 June – Lunar Festival / Tanworth / UK04 June – Under the Arches / London Fields Brew House / London / UK10/11 June – Eindhoven Psych Lab / Eindhoven / The Netherlands23/24 September – Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia / UKGnoomes23/24 September – Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia / UK---

It reads:The Gnod gig at The Lexington was on a Saturday so I had a bit of spare time in that London and ended up in the National Portrait Gallery at an exhibition of Leon Golub's work on the effects of hubris and power on the human face. A little while later, on the South Bank, I watched as a man with a tannoy conducted an interesting exercise in trying to provoke people, who wanted a quiet drink, into engaging in a discussion about the state of the country-an oddly timed attempt to 'wake people up'. Then, via Camden, it was off to a sold out gig near the Angel, it was an interestingly mixed audience for Gnod, a healthy gender split and age spread, an impressive Mohican, a variety of beards, some old guys with their ears to the musical ground, a girl in a t-shirt proclaiming 'Boyfriends are Overrated'. Support band were Blood Sport from Sheffield who played a non stop set of excellent funk tinged danceable post modern rock that went down really well and left me wondering just how many exciting, creative bands there must be in the world! Must check out their album.Gnod came on at about 9.45...Read the rest here: Music Culture Vision---

9 Apr 2016

As announced recently Rocket are going to be releasing new music by Swedish psych band Flowers Must Die.The band have been announced to be playing this years Copenhagen Psych Festival.Tickets and more information, here: CPF---

8 Apr 2016

The Guardian have written this about this weekends Gnod weekender at the GuardianGnod Weekender, LondonGnod have no outer edges: new moons, planets and black holes are formed in the deep space around their central solar system all the time. Doing justice to the scale of this Salford collective’s output, promoters Baba Yaga’s Hut have stretched the lineup across a night and a day. Saturday opens with Gnod headlining alongside Sheffield trio Blood Sport: expect abrasive clattering rubbing up against psychedelic drones. The entirety of Sunday is dedicated to myriad Gnod satellite projects, which include friends, side offerings and alternative assemblages. Highlights include the collective’s figurehead Paddy Shine, who presents slow-drift solo project Ayn Sof; core member Marlene Ribeiro’s collapsed and trippy Negra Branca project; solid walls of sound from duo Arkh Wagner; and (Ed: new Rocket Signing) HUM’s analogue electronica.The Lexington, N1, Sat & SunSee the full piece here: The GuardianBuy tickets here: Baba Yaga Hut---

6 Apr 2016

We are excited to announce the release of the debut album by UK/France band H.U.M.The album is released on 17 June on Ltd LP and CD.Read what The Quietus have to say about it here: The QuietusH.U.M. is a trio of cosmic travellers consisting of H and Olmo from the great Zam Zam and Mark Wagner from AHRKH WAGNER, Moon Ra, S&M ,**K and part time member of Gnod.The press release reads:H.U.M. marks the convergence of a triad of kindred spirits with a common goal of expanding consciousness. On Trinity Way their debut release for Rocket Recordings, the cosmic/terrestrial musician/magician triumvirate of Heloise Zamzam, Olmo Uiutna and Mark Wagner delve into ritualistic audial travelogues which unite mantric repetition, concrete noise and kosmische explorations, the better to transform and enrich the soul. As Heloise relates, "As researchers we like to leap into the great unknown to find something new. H.U.M. is a place where we can transpose and explore our energy in motion and let ourselves drift away to our visions". All three acolytes of H.U.M. arrive at this destination from a rich history of experimental music and art - Heloise and Olmo run the formerly Bristolian and now French-based Zamzamrec , which besides being a record label specialising in tape releases by artists working in psychedelic realms and beyond, they characterise as "a superfuture network, a community of musicians, storytellers, scientists, writers, poets and dreamers". Mark Wagner, meanwhile, has involved himself in a diverse and vibrant litany of projects, most recently touring as a member of GNOD, and Ahrkh Wagner and is an active practitioner of music as a spiritual medium. They first spontaneously merged together at the Woolf Festival in Wiltshire, forging a free improvisatory union which they then took on tour to spread as sonic philosophy through Europe and the UK. Following the limited edition cassette We Are One on the Bumtapes label, Trinity Way marks the most expansive and intrepid ascension yet for these psychic travellers, using primal rhythm, earthly resonances and devotional oratory as pathways to uncharted dimensions and higher metaphysical realms. These trance-like meditations and illuminating visions draw on a plethora of earthly parallels, from the iconoclastic writing of Rimbaud or Artaud to the occultist sound-world of Coil, from the invigorating DIV ethos of the Not Not Fun label to the anarchic sprawl of The Faust Tapes, and with Wagner's stream-of-consciousness incantations inviting comparisons to both Robert Calvert and Genesis P-Orridge. Yet influences come also for further afield, as testified by 'l'Ame agit', a mysterious rework and ode to Franc;oise Hardy's French pop classic 'Comment te dire adieu' or on 'Cat-man-do' which uses Heloise's recordings of a shamanic initiation in the Colombian jungle to help conjure an overwhelming air of hypnotic momentum. Altogether on another wavelength from most of which is dubbed psychedelic music in the second decade of the 21st Century, Trinity Way 1s a free-flowing odyssey of vivid, hallucinatory intensity. Yet through a marriage of simple ingredients, these three have created an off-the-map album which nonetheless places its feet on the ground and its gaze on the cosmos. As Heloise herself says; "Trinity Way is a magic door, a sonic portal. Trinity Way is not an escape of the everyday realm but an entrance, a mode, an invitation ... " Listen to the great track L'Ame Agit from the album here:And pre-order the album on LP/CD/DL from us here: Bandcamp

You can catch the band live at the Baba Yaga Hut promoted Gnod Weekender at The Lexington on 10 April, tickets can be purchased from here: Baba Yaga Hut

This is what the band say about this mixtape:In preparation for TOTS descending on Lisbon and Porto this weekend, we selected some of our fave and most inappropriate bangers for Ponto Alternativo. Featuring Tuning Circuits, Gesloten Cirkel, Sonny Sharrock, Sword, Big Busines and Judee Sill. Dig!Listen here: Ponto Alternativo---

It reads:PSYCH INSIGHT: ALBUM REVIEW, MIRROR BY GNODDarknessNumbnessAngerHopelessnessEmptinessDespairAll words to describe how many of us have felt since May 7th 2015 as the forces of capitalism got a huge nose full of ‘fuck you’ powder as our communities and services are dismantled to make way for a frenzy of corporate greed. Meanwhile those in charge demonise the poor for ‘scrounging’ while patriotically sticking their money in offshore funds which they themselves have made legal. Our society is fucked up and while the revitalised left has had small victories nothing it seems can halt the jack-booted march of the capitalist system....Read the rest of this great review here: Backseat mafia---

5 Apr 2016

As you are aware, we announced a new Goat track called 'I Sing in Silence' yesterday.This track is now available to listen to on Spotify, and you can watch this intriguing teaser video for the track above.We have already sold out of the preorder copies of the 7", but it will be available in all good record shops on 27 May.---

Just in case you missed it before, here is the amazing short film of Teeth of the Sea's incredible show playing a live soundtrack to the film 1984 at at the legendary CERN, the home of the Hadron Collider.---

Gnod – Mirror8/10Currently comprised of their four core members, Paddy Shine, Chris Haslam, Marlene Ribeiro and Alex Macarte, Gnod have jettisoned the avant-jazz, dub-industrial soundscapes of 2015’s Infinity Machines and replaced them with a short, balefully bleak and often brutal statement on 'no future'. Call me a miserable so-and-so (Ian can’t hear you, boys and girls) but this is the Gnod I love (the rest of the time I merely like them a lot).There is nothing this year that is likely to approach the relentless intensity of 'Sodom and Gomorrah', an 18-minute test of endurance and sanity with everything from power chords, forge-of-Vulcan drum hits, and Gregorian chanting to anguished screaming and…well, that’s enough surely. The rest is, by comparison, pretty muted but not by any other…Read the full review here: Soundblab---

4 Apr 2016

New music from Goat is always a time for celebration, and we are excited to announce the bands return with a 7” of brand new material.Last year Goat released the single 'It’s Time For Fun' which saw the band experimenting with drum machines, which brought a different pulse to their tribal psych. And this desire to explore new sounds continues with their new single I Sing in Silence.But instead of ‘plugging in’ new instruments the band have ‘unplugged’ and created an addictive groove with mostly un-amped, acoustic instruments.Elastic guitar lines, woodblock percussion, and flutes which drive the song are enveloped by one of the strongest vocal deliveries by the bands enigmatic singers, resulting in a powerful and catchy psych-pop number.This single is further proof that, in a world of similar sounding and similar looking psych bands, Goat are standing completely out on their own and we are all the better for it.You can listen to I Sing in Silence here:This single is ltd to 1500 copies (1000 black / 500 clear yellow) on 27 May.Preorder your copy now direct from us: Rocket RecordingsThis summer the band will be busy writing, recording, and blowing people’s minds across Europe’s greatest stages. Confirmed dates at time of going to press:01 Jun / Primavera Sound / Barcelona / Spain11 Jun / Eindhoven Psych Lab / Eindhoven / Netherlands12 Jun / Field Day / London / UK 17 Jun / Traumzeit Festival / Duisburg / Germany 19 Jun / Ile du Pointu Festival / Gaou/Hyeres / France09 Jul / Les Ardentes Festival / Liege / Belgium 10 Jul / Cactus Festival / Gent / Belgium 22 – 24 Jul / Milhões de Festa / Barcelos / Portugal 03 Sep / End of the Road Festival / UK---

1 Apr 2016

It reads:Gnod – Mirror9/10There’s something odd about the way in which music like the throbbing primordial noisy rock Gnod employ on Mirror gets labelled variably as ‘punishing’ or ‘brutal’. At the worst of times it’s a glorious and triumphant sound; a shot of dense energy I find it hard to describe as anything less than utterly magnificent. In such an environment as modern Britain, anything other than shouting gets you bloody nowhere, which is probably what’s driven Gnod to the brute-headed tunnel vision of Mirror. In making the album, a trimmed down Gnod quartet did away with the spiralling rhythms of 2015’s long-simmering Infinity Machines triple album, and focused on blunter sonic instruments: volume, ferociousness, anger… fuck it, sheer hatred. Not counting a remix, the album’s a densely distilled three tracks in 35 minutes, and it’s both Gnod’s most unpredictable and clearest statement to date.The group allotted a mere three days apiece for recording and mixing the record, and the material they got together was mostly written while on tour. To boot they were touring in the wake of the UK’s 2015 general election, which many of us have done our best to erase from our memories...Read the rest here: DIS---