Mr. Gnome – The Day You Flew Away – Double Vinyl, LP, El Marko Records, 2020

Light and dark. Death and birth. Beauty and chaos. By merging these opposing themes into a coherent whole, art-rock duo, Mr. Gnome, manage to create a sonic snapshot of life, pain, loss, and light that runs the spectrum of human emotion with their new double LP, The Day You Flew Away, set to be released October 16, 2020 on El Marko Records. Throughout it’s duration, tangled walls of sound give way suddenly, crumbling apart to reveal the golden beauty beneath, a constant ebb and flow of technicolor melody- a diversity that exists in part thanks to in-studio contributions from touring guitarist/bassist Jonah Meister, and mixing by Mark Rankin (Queens of the Stone Age, Adele, Santigold, Iggy Pop, Florence & The Machine, Bloc Party) and Claudius Mittendorfer (Interpol, Tennis, Temples, Panic at the Disco!, Parquet Courts, Ra Ra Riot). It’s their first album since 2014’s critically acclaimed The Heart of a Dark Star. The lush, expansive sounds on Mr. Gnome’s fifth full-length release propel the listener through time and space, into a universe populated by towering psychedelic beasts, ethereal spirits, and everything in between- all of which are perpetually and hypnotically dancing to the rhythm of loss and new life. By tackling these intense themes and further developing upon the boundless experimentation in production and instrumentation that has become a hallmark of the duo, The Day You Flew Away sees Mr. Gnome at their most free, with Barille and Meister embracing textures, sounds, and styles without judgement or preconception. The Day You Flew Away is a surreal, genre-shifting double LP that continuously and kaleidoscopically transforms, expanding and contracting with texture and melody. By embracing these thematic and sonic opposites, Mr. Gnome have crafted not just a lone monster with this latest release, but a living, breathing hallucinogenic universe