GNOSIS

Coming back out of extinction after 27 years was a risky business that their fellow catholics countrymen of Gracious had attemptd also, Gnidrplog of hebrew tradition tried and succeded better. Why does an agnostic or confirmed atheist such as me poit this out , you ask ? Well because this album does have a few numbers where the mid-eastern influences come in clearly. The Goldring twins reunited with the original drumer Pelgrum and enlisted ex-Procol member Copping on KB.

Right of the bat comes the best number of the album but not the only highlight. Reach for Tomorrow is a stunning piece of music with arab-like intonations and makes you hope for the rest of the album. Promise only half respected especially if you consider that this album holds no less than 7 insrtumentals. The real surprise ( not necessarily pleasing though ) is that the very hard-sung vocals are totally lost as the singing is of a pleasant note but loses its edge and inventivity. There are some very tedious moments ( Wonder, Crazy , France, City Sleeps and Fall to Ground ), but not really bad either. However Woolunga and Prozac have a didgeridoo and are very interesting. Deventer is a Camel-like instrumental dedicated to the hometown of Dutch band Lady Lake who had taken their nemes from GNi's second album. Kings of Rock and Gnosis are also noteworthy. The thing that I can and will complain about is the drumming is rather boring and sounds to modern for this kind of music.

Well as a GNI fan , I just had to discover this and was ready to make a hunt. Not fully rewarded in the quality dept. , I will only give it three stars but compared to the Gracious album , this is a good one. Oh , by the way two of the tracks were written in 73 one in 86 and the rest in the late 90's . Of course the two older tracks have my preference but not only those.

In 1999 I attented the annual Dutch progrock festival Progfarm and witnessed a performance by the twin-brothers Colin and Stewart Goldring with their band Gnidrolog. I was impressed by their skills and their typical British humor! After their concert I approached them and soon a very vivid conversation started. They told me about the time (around 1970) that Gnidrolog made their albums and frequently did gigs. This often happened in the same venues as early Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, The Nice and Yes. Enthousiasticly Colin and Stewart told us how many times they had seen these bands in their early years and even one time Genesis turned out to be their support-act because Gnidrolog was far more known than Genesis in that time! The twin-brothers were so glad with all the attention and praise they recieved this evening in Holland that they decided to make a new CD, here it is.

It opens with "Reach For Tomorrow", this one has a lot of tension between the Jewish vocals and a wide range of instruments, very original! The other tracks delives a lot of variety: folk with acoustic guitar and flute ("Deventer" a tribute to the Dutch band Lady Lake, named after their debut LP), no-nonsense rock in "Reverend Katz" (fiery guitar), "King of rock" and "Gnosis" (fine howling guitar), lap- steel-guitar in "Fall to ground" and progrock with Australian didgederoo in "Woolunga" and "Bells of Prozac".

This is a fine album for the more adventurous and open-minded progheads, it sounds very pleasant and varied.

After cramming two masterpieces into 1972, Gnidrolog gave us a casual 28 year wait between studio albums ... and the band wasn't alone in that. The 90s saw a rash of studio projects by relatively obscure 70s prog groups that had reconvened after a full two decades in the cold ... offhand I can think of T2, East Of Eden, Gracious, Beggar's Opera, Locanda Delle Fate and Metamorfosi. But after the initial excitement at the prospect of hearing these guys again wore off, very few of the comeback albums made the grade. I'm hard pressed to think of one that did justice to the group in its prime ... Van Der Graaf Generator's Present is probably the most respectable of such reunion albums. Unfortunately, Gnosis is not in the same class ... it's barely even a prog album actually ... most of Gnosis is either New-Age or radio friendly pop-rock.

Sadly, that is far from the only grouse I have about what should have been a thrilling event. An overly generous dose of instrumentals is one thing that blights this album, particularly as the sounds the band have chosen are so contemporary (ie 90s) that they make Gnidrolog sound ordinary ... remember that the variation in sound and arrangements was one of the key factors in making the band so special to begin with. Even allowing for the change in direction, it's really too much that almost none of the 14 pieces possess chaotic blend of aggression and beauty that made In Spite Of Harry's Toenail and Lady Lake sound so fresh. To top it all, the whole damn album weighs in at 74 minutes, so that even the rare moments of quality are drowned out by the sheer volume of pedestrian material.

Let's talk about the good stuff first. The opener Reach For Tomorrow is interesting and emotive enough, with an impassioned vocal turn from Colin Goldring and the best melodies and instrumental passages. It flows nicely into Reverend Katz which has a catchy heavy riff, but sounds at times lamentably like the work of a hair rock band (Mr Big especially when Stewart Goldring's guitar fireworks take over the end of the song).

The other enjoyable tracks include Deventer, a ear-catching instrumental, with some delicate flute and acoustic guitar moments, and Kings Of Rock, another highly listenable power rock tune like Reverend Katz, although this one has a monster chorus, and the addition of former Procol Harum organist Chris Copping is also felt here. The title track too is at least a little lively, even if its sounds are really unappealing.

But in general the firm of Goldring, Goldring and Pegrum flounder under the weight of weak forgettable material that doesn't live up to the name Gnidrolog. Fall To Ground is such a tepid radio ballad that I can scarcely credit it, Wonder Wonder is ear candy with a touch of reggae, while Crazy Crazy and Going To France are apallingly mediocre commercial boogie rock songs with (would you believe it?) a Southern rock tinge!

It's clear that the Goldrings saw New Age as a way to come back (a logical assumption for any veteran prog outfit to have made) and also tried to hedge the bet with a fat slab of AOR. After all these are the guys who formed the punk combo The Port Dukes back in 1977! As much as I admire Gnidrolog's earlier work (and I concede that my love for those albums may make me particularly harsh on Gnosis) I have to advise you to steer well clear of this one. ... 40% on the MPV scale

This one should not necessarily be seen too much in comparison with their outputs from the early seventies. Here we find matured musicians who do not need to prove anything nor need to feel the need to stay too close to their past work. The music consists of shorter tracks - often with simpler song structures, but it does come with great variety. A nice number of Instrumental pieces are mixed in with the vocal tracks, changing and sometimes unusual instrumentation keep the listener interested even over the long span of 74+ minutes. Influences and comparisons can be made with the later works of Kayak, Procul Harum, Proto-Kaw or The Syn. If you like the aforementioned bands you cannot go wrong with "Gnosis". Excellent music with timeless qualities.

Gnosis was a massive come-back for Gnidrolog. After 28 years of silence, they recorded an album nobody had really dared to wait for. Gnidrolog had disbanded already in 1972, with no come-backs in between, which made one think they would never do it. Gnosis doesn't hit jackpot, but it is not a bad album. The sheer quantity of music - these 14 tracks would have been published as a double album in the 70's - is vast, and some of the tunes work nicely. This makes me wonder, why didn't they do the record earlier.

Gnosis is not the most consistent album. There are some effective instrumentals, and the jewish influences of Reach For Tomorrow are exciting, but on the other hand some songs are close to easy-listening mainstream rock. However, Gnidrolog plays realy well, and obviously the band enjoyed making this album. For that reason it's even more intriguing, why they haven't continued, especially as the sleeve text says they are free from commercial pressures.

I rediscovered Gnidrolog in a recent fit of nostalgia partly driven by middle age no doubt and partly in despair at hearing anything interesting in what my children are listening to. It was then a pleasant surprise to find they had made a relatively recent album. I was then coming back to them and comparing the new and old material. I think I would differ a little in the assessment of the other reviewers, on the positive side. What I liked about this album is that it appears to be an attemt to create an artwork without becoming pompous and overblown. One of the interesting evolutions seemed to be in the lyrics. In the first two albums these seemed to be relatively weak compared to the music and the very distinctive voice of Colin Goldring. The new songs seemed to be drawn from lived experience and avoided some of the grandiosity of the early work which is replaced by an authenticity which deepens the work in my view. I would agree that the music is a little less 'edgy' than the early work, but there is real diversity here, between the aboriginal sounds, the middle-eastern and 'cantor' style and of course the rock base. Despite this, they retain the idiom they were working in that gives it a feel of continuity which belies the long period between the composition of some of the songs. Added to this, the production values are very high, which, given that this appears to have been produced on a shoestring is impressive. The vocals and musicianship still have the power to move, especially as they are now exposed by their music rather than hiding behind it. So, I would say they pulled off an almost impossible feat - they evolved from a body of work a quarter of a century in the closet. I can only hope they feel up to doing another album in which they will have the confidence to push their new music into a slightly more edgy form.