INTRODUCING - Godspeed You ! Black Emperor

From the depths of Montreal, Canada in the late 1990's a group of musicians with anarchistic leanings formed themselves into a collective and began making music together. They had no overriding concept or style to wrap around what they were doing.  The music that evolved makes experiments with form and progression, they feel as though they are freely structured as they flow in and out of intensity and moods. Though you might think each piece was largely improvised, the final compositions are far more carefully assembled and considered than you might think.

Their name Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a borrowed one , taken from a Japanese documentary of that name about biker gangs from 1976. The term 'post-rock' has been used as a rather lazy label to pin on their music, its not particularly descriptive nor self evident why. But if you break from conventions then you also depart from easy categorisation. So something purposefully vague like 'post rock' gets applied.

What would become the familiar patterning and elements in their music is present from the very first album. There are no songs or song structures, its only ever instrumental pieces. Recordings of ordinary peoples voices fade in or out, becoming absorbed into drone like guitars or violins. This melding could just as easily lead to a riotously wild out of control cacophony or a plangent simple musical guitar phrase that rises to an uplifting and exultant crescendo. Though 'post rock' they continue to use rock instrumentation for its dynamic tonal qualities but woven into an overall composition that could include anything.. They do this without descending into the stilted artifice of the avante garde, pseudo classicism or the pompous self indulgent virtuosic fiddling of 70's Prog Rock. Godspeed are far more human and 'Brechtian' in their approach than that.

The track 'Sleep' from Lift Your Skiny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven

The arc their music takes has great nobility. Its as though you are travelling through the grand sweep of a dramatic landscapes, where grim industrial grinding and grating suddenly reveals itself as the source for a heart stopping elegy, as if you've just stumbled into a beautiful vision by Blake.  I love to don a pair of headphones, pick an album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor to play, and do nothing else other than listen to it for over an hour and be taken on an auditory emotional journey. It can be one of the most rewarding musical adventures to surrender yourself to that I know.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, use album titles in an elliptical poetic manner, populated by capital letters, hash-tags and emphatic exclamation marks. These give little clue to the music held within, or how to interpret it. With each album there's been an increasing feeling of trenchant urgency and brevity, the music developing a harder edged, punchier more driven style. 

Here is a discography with links to You Tube ( my star ratings in brackets )

1997 - F# A#  ( **** )
1998 - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada (***)
2000 - Lift Your Skiny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven (****** )
2002 - Yanqui U X O ( ****** )
2012 - Alleluia! Dont Bend! Ascend! (*****)
2015 - Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress (****)
2017 - Luciferian Towers (****)
2021 - G_D's Pee AT STATES END! ( released 2nd April 2021 )