Godspeed! You Black Emperor

[Sam]

Can someone tell me a little about this group and review each of their CDs. I bought "f#a#..."and I like it but am curious to know how good it is in comparison to their others.

[Dirty Boy]

You started with what is probably their best overall record imo.It's difficult going into much detail about their stuff, as it all mostly tends to follow a pattern of soft and understated, building up to huge crashing crescendos then back down again with some noise collage/found sound things thrown in.

Slow Riot For New Zero Canada is more of a mini-album as there's only two tracks and it's probably the simplest of everything they've released, but it's definitely worth hearing, if only for some nutcase reciting Iron Maiden lyrics as some kind of political manifesto on the second track.And also cos it's rather lovely.

Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven Is class stuff again and worth getting.Can't really say much more mainly for the reasons stated above.I know there's a few other fans round these parts, so maybe they could go into more detail about this and   Yanqui U.X.O. which i still haven't heard.

The side projects are generally worth a listen as well. The best ones are probably Silver mt Zion and Set Fire To Flames

Edit: Or looky at this- http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDMISS70402150300162269&sql=B2s967ui0o0jk

[Borboski]

Mein Gott.

I once felt so passionately about this band it is hard to explain. If ever I felt there was the potential in music to capture the sublime, then this band managed it.

Raise Your Skinny Fists probably is the most accessible - if only for the opening crescendo. After listening to the first couple of albums its perhaps a little predictable - but when you can be predictable and this powerful who cares.

I love this stuff now. Intelligent music - touching on a political avant garde I'd go so far to say.

Yanqui XO is probably the weakest of the bunch - but its still magnificent. It wouldn't be a baaad thing if they broke up now - and left a quality canon.

Explosions In The Sky are of course a comparable band - more interesting at the mo for me because they're strictly guitar.

Does anyone know anything about Rachel's?

[chand]

Does anyone know anything about Rachel's?

Yeah, I like Rachel's. They're quite a different proposition to Godspeed, though. They're more classical, I guess, and their recent album 'Systems/Layers' has a lot of field recordings and is generally more experimental, aspects of it compare more to Set Fire To Flames than Godspeed.

Love Explosions In The Sky, too, a good recommendation for fans of  those guys would be a Japanese group by the name of Mono, who for my money on 'Under The Pipal Tree' did the quiet/loud/shimmery beauty thing as effectively as anybody.

[Cambrian Times]

I've only just recently got into Godspeed!.. mainly because of 28 days later (the movement the Sad Mafiosa from Track 2 of F#a# infinity -East Hastings-is used when Jim is walking about town).  My favourite track has to be either the above or movement 2 of Motherfucker = Redemer (track 4 Yanqui UXO).

I don't have Slow Riot yet, but it's only a matter of time ::hee hee::

Is it just me but on hearing the opening movement of Dead Flag Blues could so easily have soundtracked the events of 9/11 or am I being crass?

[jobotic]

Can someone tell me a little about this group and review each of their CDs. I bought "f#a#..."and I like it but am curious to know how good it is in comparison to their others.

I think it's the best one.

[Bronzy]

There you go Sam, you can stop worrying now.

[sevendaughters]

F#A# infinity - less a proper band and more a loose collective (like 16 people credited on the sleeve), twangy guitar summoning up the deserted streets after the apocalypse mixed with spoken word, field recordings, ambient sections, all tracks seem to cohere in a general direction after a while. GOOD.

Slow Riot etc - 30 mins, two tracks, focused post-rock with orchestral pretension and less in the way of mood pieces, track 1 is probably the purest hit of crescendo-period GY!BE going and maybe their best song, the second one is longer and slower and features field recordings of a man reading doomy Iron Maiden lyrics and passing them off as his own poetry (the band didn't know this). This record OWNS.

Lift Your Skinny - 90 mins, 4 tracks, tracks 1-3 mix the two above styles only with the field recordings and samples moving toward the religious and the material (the supermarket telling people not to give money to tramps). A lot of stylistic ground covered within post-rock. Disc 1 track 1 features a lengthy joyful uplift with horns (some have said this first ten minutes is their best ten minutes) before a gradual slowdown and turn to horror. Track 2 starts with ambient sounds and recordings of touched prophets before commencing a grand death waltz that Hope of the States would spent a few years trying to rip. Disc 2 track 1 is another contender for TOP GYBE with an old remniscent man, a ghost train melody, and then some utterly shit-hot double drumming near the end. BANG. the final track is more of a collage containing some Francophone kids, some outbursts of space rock, and some amniotic droning. GREAT RECORD.

Yanqui UXO was recorded by Steve Albini and a lot of people think this isn't his best work. It is basically three very long tracks (two split into two). Track 1 (I'm pretending there's 3) is a slow-building piece that drops into a vast elegy for a bombed village on the ten minute mark and drops into its sad lament during the back end. Track 2 is a long old waltz with a slow funereal bit featuring Matana Roberts on some kind of reed instrument, it builds back into a big old climax with a bit of flanged guitar and is probably their first one that seems a bit by-the-numbers if honest. No matter, the 30 minute monolith that closes absolute wrecks: the first 20 mins is a better waltz with some energy and dynamic. It drops to another haunted wander before the final 10 minutes of the record grab you by the nips and blast you into space with a great groove and maybe even a little bit of improv in the playing for the first time.

MORE TO COME.

[sevendaughters]

note - after F#A# they became a solid 9 piece band. By the time they reform (these are the reform-period records) they're down to an 8-piece (I think) after third guitarist Roger leaves. His band Fly Pan Am ruled.

Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! - two long post-rocking pieces and two shorter bits. Mladic is one left over from the previous incarnation of the band, I saw them do it in 2003, gets big quickly and stays huge. great violin playing on this. in an eastern scale and has relations with My Father My King in some respects and the general arena of Balkan music (look at the title! also it used to be referred to on setlists as 'Albanian'). a great piece to drop on comeback but misleading. drone piece #1 does what it says on the tin. their first proper long song since coming back ('We Drift Like Worried Fire') goes through a number of movements with some Reichian strings and some strange percussive moments, but it all coalesces toward the crescendo with a strange kraut-eastern hybrid that i find appealing. the final drone piece happens.

Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress - continues the shitty album titles since coming back trend, but also continues the still pretty good vibes. Track 1 sees them slow down a bit and move towards latter-day Earth a little, almost a tangible element of woodsist metal lurking in the background there. not their most memorable but effective. track 2 is a ten min ambient/mood piece, fine. track 3 is another one, but with a bit more focus. fortunately the final track is the awesomely named PISS CROWNS ARE TREBLED which after 26 mins of slowness and drone and ambient is a great kick up the melodics. if you don't like the last 7 minutes of this you are just DEAD. not a great album but that last track does it.

should point out there's pretty much no field recording anymore.

Luciferian Towers - possibly their weakest overall release. it's more on the ambient/drone/lulling side of their style. i'm bluffing a little because i know it the least, but it's also kept me at arm's length. there are some good bits like this one in Bosses Hang where a couple of instruments are playing but I sense no real direction for the ensemble as a whole here. just good consonant drones with some ornamentation on the whole. worth a listen.

[sevendaughters]

lol i thought this was a new thread!

[kittens]

i saw em do luciferian towers live last year after finding the record itself not great. totally turned me around on it, probably the best live performance i have attended and showed me it's actually not not great.

[holyzombiejesus]

Why resurrect a 15 year old thread?

[Emma Raducanu]

Well, if anything, I enjoyed sevendaughters review as it's been 15 years since I last listened to them. Might put them on a little later.