As another deep, ominous swell of strings rises up from underneath the repetitive piano refrain in the title track to The Arrival of The Fog, I give in to the inevitable cliché, two whole minutes into the album. I envision that were I an art-house filmmaker, I’d shoot a nautical storm in black and white, an intrepid little boat fighting to stay afloat, the small crew shouting silently to each other as they work to survive, gigantic waves pounding the deck in slow motion, all -you guessed it- set to this track. It’d be rich with visual metaphor and I’d win a prize. Yeah. This sort of thing never fails to spark the imagination.The Arrival of The Fog is the fifth Gnac (pronounced ‘Niack’) album from Mark Tranmer, who has been producing albums of instrumental soundscapes under the Gnac name for over a decade now.Gnac has often been noted for feeling like interesting incidental music and sometimes unfairly dismissed as such. It’s understandable that this collection of songs will be observed in the same way, but the misunderstanding is that the necessary visual illustrations are missing. Indeed, each piece of music on this album is a unique and inspiring accompaniment to the mental images that it invites your imagination to create. While it’s true that the complex and at times lengthy compositions on this album can occasionally slip just onto the wrong side of self-indulgence, it’s also monumentally difficult to dislike something that sounds so intelligent and so very mature.This album is stocked with impressive subtleties and deftness. From the intriguing combination of soft military drums and satie-esque piano that brings to mind lovers in Parisian cafes on ‘Vetchinsky Backdrop’, to the perfectly pitched melodic rhythms on ‘Japanese Fiction’. Other tracks such as ‘Nautical Episodes’ bring to mind a more grown-up Virgin Suicides era Air.The Arrival of The Fog climbs from it’s sombre opening into light melodies sprinkled with xylophone, warmly coloured by uplifting synthesized brass notes and swings back again, dropping the listener headlong into ethereal, haunting dream sequences that pulsate with a powerful, understated intensity.Tranmer is a man of his craft, he creates aural scenes with seasoned verve. Gnac songs are a testament to how practiced he is at meticulously building tracks, combining his ideas into a cohesive narrative. Musically, Tranmer seems to have an awful lot to say, and admittedly sometimes I can’t help but feel that he does take a long time to say it. It can at times take patience, but to those with the attentive ear, the rewards are obvious.Some may relegate it to the role of pleasing background music, but with the investment of the attention it deserves, fans of instrumental music from Do Make Say Think to Isis should find all 70 minutes of The Arrival of The Fog an intensely pleasurable listening experience. 88%Links GNAC [official site] [myspace]