Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

[kitsofan34]

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

Welcome to a discussion thread about Canadian post rock outfit, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I am becoming more and more enamored with this band, my body become Goosebumps Central on my last listen to "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennae To Heaven".

Are there any other fans on this forum?

[Don_Preston]

They're more exciting than Tortoise. Ask the missus, Michelle.

[thenoise]

I was really caught up in the mythos of GYBE around the turn of the millennium.  I think that they are one of the last bands that I read about extensively for a long time before I ever got round to listening to them.

My favourite release is Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP, the first track being their most successful (to me) string-led slow build post rock work and the second one of their most powerful accompaniments to a 'found sound' type spoken word recordings - an interview with some crazy paranoid street poet type ranting about the government.

I amassed a great load of live recordings of them in the Napster heyday, which presumably I still have somewhere.  Much faster and rockier than the studio versions, some of the concerts got more listens from me than the proper releases.  I never managed to see them live, much to my disappointment.

[Hangthebuggers]

Watched them on tour in Manchester a few years ago, absolutely stunning and haunting.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Lift your Skinny Fists is one of my favourite albums ever. They're utterly dull live though which was a bit gutting for me the first time I saw them 12 years ago. I saw them again a few years back and got the same feeling, the meandering nature of their stuff just doesn't hold my attention live.

[kittens]

latest album/ep wasn't up to much. i love f#a#∞ though, and yanqui uxo

[gabrielconroy]

I got hugely into Slow Riot when I was a teenager, followed by Lift your Skinny Fists and F#A#∞. Their sound of a bleak apocalypse was something I found profoundly affecting at that age, violent and majestic, and tender and sad. Nowadays I really have to be in the right mood for it, or they can sound very pretentious.

I saw them live in London last November, and while they were pretty good, the venue was way too big (in contrast, I saw Silver Mt Zion in a pub in Manchester a few years ago. That was fantastic).

[The Roofdog]

F#A#oo and Slow Riot grabbed me immediately but it took me ages to get into Lift your Skinny Fists. Now I'd say it's my favourite Godspeed record.

Never seen them live, are they really not that great? Most slow-burner post-rock-type bands I've seen are even better live, like Mogwai, you really get the dynamic range that my crappy stereo swallows a bit.

[thenoise]

Never seen them live, are they really not that great? Most slow-burner post-rock-type bands I've seen are even better live, like Mogwai, you really get the dynamic range that my crappy stereo swallows a bit.

The numerous live bootlegs suggest otherwise.  They actively supported taping of gigs so long as they are not sold for profit, right from the start.  Archive.org is a good place to start:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3AGodspeedYouBlackEmperor&sort=-publicdate

Lots of youtube as well, dodgy quality as standard but you get some idea of the film projections etc.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

F#A#oo and Slow Riot grabbed me immediately but it took me ages to get into Lift your Skinny Fists. Now I'd say it's my favourite Godspeed record.

Never seen them live, are they really not that great? Most slow-burner post-rock-type bands I've seen are even better live, like Mogwai, you really get the dynamic range that my crappy stereo swallows a bit.

Mogwai take a lot less time to get to the point and are massively louder than GYBE (All the individual instruments would be totally lost in the mix if they were as distorted as Mogwai), because of this Mogwai give the thrill of sheer waves of volume washing over you too.

[Famous Mortimer]

I saw Mogwai on their first ever tour, supporting Urusei Yatsura, and they were amazing. Then I saw them years later in London somewhere, and they were dull as piss. Their songs were so slow that people were shouting from the crowd "get on with it!"

GYBE are one of my favourite ever bands, though, and "Lift your Skinny Fists..." is probably top ten of all time for me. There's just something about it. My favourite ever song they did was the Peel Session track that is the sound of a particularly unpleasant nightmare.

[vrailaine]

Moya is pretty fucking class, I like the other stuff I've heard, but Moya, yeah.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

This is one of my favourite pieces of music ever,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7itTG4yICQ

Just fucking exquisite.

[syntaxerror]

Never seen them live, are they really not that great? Most slow-burner post-rock-type bands I've seen are even better live, like Mogwai, you really get the dynamic range that my crappy stereo swallows a bit.

I saw them a few years ago and they were very good indeed. I was slightly annoyed that it was a standing gig though, as I was very hungover and just wanted to sit down - plus I was kind of hoping for a seat - Its not really standing music is it.

[Serge]

'Yanqui U.X.O.' is one of my favourite albums, especially the amazing 'Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls'. I remember buying it not long before Christmas in 2001, and giving it its first listen as I was wrapping presents. That was pretty weird.

[mcbpete]

latest album/ep wasn't up to much.

Absolutely - didn't seem to have any of the sound I loved GY!BE previously for. Wasn't really the return to form that the many years absence deserved

[Serge]

Though as I understand it, weren't the two long tracks - i.e. about 80% of the 'new' album - recorded before the hiatus, so were, in effect, outtakes from a decade ago?

[Spiteface]

Though as I understand it, weren't the two long tracks - i.e. about 80% of the 'new' album - recorded before the hiatus, so were, in effect, outtakes from a decade ago?

I don't know about when they were recorded, but yes "Mladic" and "We Drift Like Worried Fire" were played live on the Yanqui UXO tours as "Albanian" and "Gamelan" respectively.

I love me some Godspeed. I actually got into them through a member of these boards, many moons ago, who kindly sent me a CD with all their stuff on it as MP3s, when I made a post on here asking what would be the best one to start with. I actually went out and bought them all myself afterwards as well.

[Black Ship]

Yep, count me in as a GY!BE fan. Got into them after "28 Days Later", sufficient to say that "East Hastings" is one of my favourite tracks.

[amnesiac]

BOOM! New album dropped and streaming (on Google Music at least)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asunder,_Sweet_and_Other_Distress

The first track is totally bombastic telefantastic and will get many many repeat listens. Tracks 2 & 3 seem to be the same thing and I'm looking forward to listening to them walking in the dark on a deserted road.
Track 4 has the amazing title 'Piss Crowns Are Trebled' and is amazing, I'm liveblogging listening to this for the first time: this melody seems to be forged in the very fires of chaos, oh it's so lovely how it moves around fucking hell they do this so well no one touches them. 14mins! hahaha I'm bathing in this shit right here, it's like in the film Sunshine when the psychologists walks into the light room and turns off the filter.

[Serge]

Yeah, I'm enjoying 'Asunder' very much and 'Piss Clowns Are Trebled' is indeed amazingly titled.

[Spiteface]

It's grown on me.

I listened to it once, and wasn't keen on it. Then some time later, I felt a little bad that I hadn't given it more of a chance, and I like it much more now.

[amnesiac]

had NO idea any other fucker had replied to this thread and the SHITNESS board software doesn't alert you. Can you remember to upvote OR downvote me so I know there's been action, there's no other way.

[chand]

Listened to it once so far, it's flipping great and the final track is up there with the best stuff they ever did.

[axel]

Anyone going to see GYBE at the London Coronet (Elephant&Castle) on  the 18th August?
The abandoned theater vibe of the venue should suit them very well.
It gets knocked down next year, so even more reason to enjoy the theater whilst it lasts.

[monolith]

Don't like their more recent stuff but Slow Riot is a great EP and f#a#∞ is incredible, puts me right in to a dystopian future in my mind.

Really glad I saw this thread as I think I should give that album a listen, has been a few years.

[sevendaughters]

bumping this as I've had a re-listen to all of their stuff. I was a bit of a mega-fan back in the day (flew to Toronto to see them do two nights there) but renounced them and didn't get back into them when they came back (was fed up of everyone reforming, basically).

because they spawned so many poor imitators, and because they probably didn't capitalise on the time when people were really hungry for their return, and also because there's more of an avenue for 'smart' music in the general culture that makes GY!BE's music seem relatively formula-driven (it's not, but i get it), that i think general cultural reappraisal might not happen for a while yet.

i like how they represent a flipside to the lost years of the late 90s; while many were still playing in postmodernism and banking on MTV2 rock dollars in the last of the big spending label years they were there, admittedly depressedly, saying there was this big fight to come, bigger than the immediate culture of rock and roll, and it would probably be lost. i'm not saying they predicted 9/11 or subsequent invasion. but i think they were savvy enough to know that the party was going to end and that it would probably shatter that cosy consensus the west had built up.

i like how you can feel the progression across their records from a loose collection of musicians to one of the few big-ish groups that held their political nerve after 9/11. i can also see why they knocked it on the head for a bit. their shows were like this big doom-in of sad worried people. one of the shows I saw Efrim gave this very earnest speech. he'd been arrested in the States for 'looking like a terrorist' a few days before. after the tour one of them splits and releases a record that sounds like this, probably indicating that they're getting tired of this heavy, sad, meaningful thing.

the only record that didn't gel with me is the newest one. aside from that there's a lot to love across their discography, with at least one staggering piece per release. and when you listen with distance, it's quite clear that from F#A#∞ to Yanqui UXO is a trajectory that takes in different recording styles, different compositional approaches, different influences. that post-rock grew so conventional around them is not their fault: they went from spaghetti western to found sound to amniotic ambient to oceanic waltzes to meditative jazz (hey that clarinet bit on Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls is Matana Roberts!) to space rock.

what sort of haunts me is that they'd articulated a new-ish direction with the last track on Yanqui UXO and a track they were playing live named 'Albanian' (that appears on their first comeback record as 'Mladic') that was less about stitched together pieces and crescendos and more about the sustained intensity and nuance within a mode and a bit of the groove that great live bands get when they play a lot (they were great when i saw them, GREAT). going away and coming back leads to them not being as 'on it' and as such the pieces feel more 'written'. 'Piss Crowns Are Trebled' is their one true new era masterpiece though.

tl;dr still a great band of our day and possibly overlooked.

[a duncandisorderly]

while on our first band trip to the US, the three of us wandered into AKA records in philly, & were quickly won over by the post-rock playing while we browsed. all three of us bought copies of it, 'yanqui uxo', & a few months later I saw them live at the garage in london. right up my street, along with labradford & one or two others, though I never got on with tortoise particularly.

[sevendaughters]

on some days i think i consider Labradford my favourite band...ever?...for whatever that is worth

also i like Tortoise in all of their slightly clinical egg-headed glory.

what was your band chief?

[a duncandisorderly]

on some days i think i consider Labradford my favourite band...ever?...for whatever that is worth

also i like Tortoise in all of their slightly clinical egg-headed glory.

what was your band chief?

I saw labradford probably five times all told. on one occasion, they made a rare visit to the mic to tell us that the set would be somewhat shorter & more rudimentary than intended, as one of their samplers was acting up. the resulting pared back sound left us in tears.

I am one third of this lot: 

http://www.radiomassacreinternational.com/biography/