Blod - Knutna Nävar

Knutna Navar was the first Blod record i heard, way back in the Before Times of 2018 when it was first released by Forlag For Fri Musik (a label that now seems to have fully transformed into Discreet, i guess). Excellent Belgium imprint, Aguirre, are now reissuing, alongside another Blod archive collection and an early Enhet For Fri Musik collection which we're assured we'll also receive soon (why we've yet to is for another day), and with it a reminder you don't forget your first time - Knutna Navar remains my favourite Blod record. It still feels beamed in from another world, a cultish avant folk distortion plucked from the multiverse where everything sits just a touch off centre. Is that water i see flowing backwards? And has my watch stopped? Time in the world of Blod is probably only measured in seasons... Gustaf Dicksson is hugely adept at imagining a world within - or outside - the world, one you're either sucked into or causes utter confusion, something he achieves by plucking ideas from a blurred timeline that stretches into odd pockets of cultural history and expression, a kind of ethnographic exploration of folk's pre-modern timeline. Knutna Havar is said to draw influence from the Swedish progg (NOT prog rock) music of the 60s, a new concept to these ears, so i'm drawn to other things here, hearing a lot of the commune-orientated output of the first iteration of Amon Duul and Faust (of which perhaps progg is related?), though that doesn't quite capture the inherent uncanny nature of the music, feeling both familiar and alien at the same time, as if the object and the memory of it are held in a dissonant fog. My pidgeon translation tells me knutna navar means knotted hand. Well, of course... Edition of 500.