Godspeed You! Black Emperor

My first experience with Godspeed You! Black Emperor came about in December of 2000. A date, which changed my musical perception and life for the better.

The band is from Montreal and is considered one of the best acts from the Post-rock scene. This genre of music incorporates influences from: krautrock, prog rock, jazz, ambient, noise, classical, tape music, avant-garde to mention a few. Typically the pieces are lengthy, instrumental, containing repetition of timbre and motifs. Vocals are uncommon and when they are included, they are not traditional clean sounding , but rather behave like another instrument and incidental to sound, thus creating a sonic texture.

Internet purchases were infrequent in those days so I came across their album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven in a music market in Mexico City. I knew the vendor, he specialized in non-popular genres like: Prog, Kraut, Ambient, Math rock, so I always trusted his selection. As I perused the albums I spotted one, which had a brown cardboard box and the image of two hands and sonic waves forming circles. And that was it. No letters, no clue as to what kind of music was hidden behind it. I asked, “Quebecois Post-rock” was the brief reply. So I bought it and went home to listen to it.

That album has only 4 songs, each one more than 18 minutes though. The first song, Storm, begins with some horns playing low in the background, a piano enters, they repeat the motif, violins join, bells, then a bass... at minute 3:11 an explosion, where drums and guitar join the so called motif. Mind blowing, orgasm giving… harder than heroin but not damaging.  From there on I was converted.

Godspeed has around 7 to 8 musicians, with only three or four being the constant members. They are not like Beyoncé, they avoid the spotlight, indeed that is part of their creed, nor have any scandals or legends to their name save for one incident with the police in the U.S.A. which is alluded in Michael Moore´s Dude, Where´s My Country?

I have seen them play twice, once in Europe and the other in Mexico, they don’t or hardly talk to their audience and there´s no special effects, it´s just them, their instruments and black and white or sepia film projections which transport you to their moribund concept of human society.

Legends have existed that they are anarchists, one member has come out of the closet but the rest have never confirmed this, but they are very critical of western society especially in regards with the military and economic tradition governing since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The day I listened to the album I must have played it at least 3 times. I couldn’t get over it. I was in university, not the one of my choice because the National Autonomous University of Mexico had been closed for a couple of months due to a student movement which had been taken over by extremists who cared little for the masses and only want to push their own agenda believing they are the only ones who can help the chimera which they define as the “public”. I didn’t like my school, but I had excellent teachers. It was far away; cold, and sometimes I believed the administration cared more about cash than about knowledge. Be that as it may I learnt a lot, and this comes from somebody (me) who strongly dislikes going to school, especially in the Mexican system where they give preference to academic demagoguery and napalm you with more subjects than any normal being can grasp in a short period of time.

Those dark mornings when I showed up, seeing the majority arrive by car, whilst I felt an ache because I had left the house so early I hadn’t had breakfast; only a cigarette and only music from my Discman could ease the anxiety I felt. Godspeed were my companions. It’s not happy music, quite the contrary, every note or sound is somber, but so melancholic, which Aristotle always associated with intelligence and creativeness, but somehow uplifting and powerful.

The next day I went to purchase their first album, for I had discovered that Lift… was their second album. F#A∞ was their first and was even more mind melting than the second.

The first song, Dead Flag Blues, commences with the following narration:

“The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel

And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides

And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt

And we're on so many drugs

With the radio on and the curtains drawn…”

Those words define most of their sound, and which is why maybe mainstream stays away from that genre. However if you stick to the end, it has one of the most “vivaldiesque” and uplifting sensations ever created. The combination: guitars, bass, cellos, violins, two drums, trumpets and sincerity, which goes hand to hand with pessimism, makes them one of the greatest bands of all time, though not for “marvel” fans. They are like eating tongue, delicious but scare away the prejudiced, even though it shouldn’t.

In the film 28 days, which is Godspeed’s nearest caress with popularity, their song East Hastings plays in that gargantuan sequence when Cillian Murphy wakes up from the hospital and finds an abandoned London… unforgettable. Those relentless drums and strings at the end are a nuclear strike at the empathy and aesthetic soul of any human being.

Their sixth album, Luciferian Towers, came out during the last quarter of 2017, closer to 2018 and I mention this because it turned out that it was the album I listened to the most during 2018, according to Spotify that is.

I have no way to debate it and if there is such a way, I really can’t be bothered, I’m not a twitter influencer and I have obligations to attend to.

Be that as it may, it is their best album since the first.

There are two songs which are at the level of Pink Floyd’s Echoes or King Crimson’s Starless, and they are: Bosses Hang and Anthem for No State… mind boggling.

Godspeed are a band like no other, even in their genre. They are so extreme they take their name from a Japanese documentary about a gang of bikers. Their music is epic and if you are endowed with patience and good taste I sincerely recommend you give them a try. I saw them November 2017; the ticket being a present and it reminded me what art is, and should be. 

Here’s a song, give it a go.