I just finished listening to one of the most remarkable albums I’ve heard in a long, long time. It’s called ‘Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven’ by the Canadian band ‘Godspeed You! Black Emperor’. Here is the YouTube link (to the entire album).
I love the sound of this album; I absolutely love it. Lush and layered, building to climaxes, haunting and melancholy, I’d say that a lot of it can be described as “music as tears”. I hope you’ll check it out and tell me what you think. And, if you do give it a try, I strongly suggest you commit to a good ten or fifteen minutes of uninterrupted listening. Much of what I liked about was the build up, and that would be lost by only listening to a few short, disconnected snippets from it.
Of course, I hope you’ll want to hear for yourself the music that has excited me so much. So, here’s a link to one of the great tracks on the album, called Static.. If you don’t care for this, you’ll probably not like the rest of the album either (which would be a shame because I think it’s simply amazing and unlike anything I’ve heard before).
I actually ‘discovered’ the band when I watched this video which used the cut linked above, ‘Static’, as its background soundtrack. Although not done in a perfectly smooth way, the video is explosive in more ways than one. I urge you to give it a try (especially if you don’t have the hour and change it takes to listen to the entire album from which it’s taken). note - this linked video shows “Taliban insurgents” being taken out by fire from an Apache helicopter. Not too surprisingly, then, it is somewhat graphic and may not be something you wish to see.
Finally, if you’re like me, you’ll probably be interested to know what some of the more popular (and I think more reliable) critics have to say about it. So, here is the link to the Pitchfork review, and here is the one for its review at AllMusic.
I like GSY!BE a lot too, and that is their best album IMO. Not everyday listening perhaps, but on occasion they are just perfect.
You might like to check out a couple of bands that are in the same sort of “post-rock” area Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros and Mogwai.
Yes, indeed, Sigur Ros is great. Maybe a bit ‘softer’, say, than GSYBE but cut from the same cloth, absolutely.
Mogwai was mentioned and recommended by a lot of people in some of the comments on the GSYBE videos on You Tube. You can bet I will be checking them out.
I think Sleep is the best song of the album. From that opening monologue of an old guy talking about Coney Island’s heydays (they don’t sleep anymore on the beach …) to the haunting second movement (Monheim) to the uplifting/hopeful final movement (Broken Windows, Locks of Love pt III - starts around 13:24).
It’s also probably a better song for beginners. It doesn’t have the fairly lengthy passages of ambient noise / field recordings of Static
The other bands mentioned are all recommended, but Explosions in the Sky I found to be dreadfully boring-postprog by the numbers, soulless, mechanical.
Another side project for GY!BE is ASMZ&TTLLMO : A Silver Mt. Zion & the Tra-La-La Memorial Orchestra (They have about 50 different names), but they’re equally awesome (IMO)
Yeah, they’re great, except for the talking bits. I fucking hate the talking bits, ruins the whole package for me.
Fortunately I’m both a musician and good at computers, so I edited my own versions of their CDs and can now enjoy the music without the stupid talky crap.
As an old guy (I saw the Beatles in 1966 for gawdsakes!), it’s nice to know there’s still such amazing new music being made. Although I’m not knocking their taste (duh), so many “young people today” seem to be into the same stuff I was tripping to, like, 45 years ago!
I have some time off coming up and definitely plan to check out Godspeed’s entire oeuvre as Enlightening Meditation has recommended.
I can remember listening to F#C#8 - dammit, copy and paste - I remember listening to F♯A♯∞ whilst watching, live on television, the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. With the clouds of dust rolling through the streets of New York and the stretchers waiting outside the local hospitals for casualties that were never going to arrive.
“We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death”. I will never forget that line. The band recorded the album in 1997 and I had a 1998 issue; in my opinion it’s their crowning achievement, and I say this in the knowledge that my personal experience probably colours my opinion.
After that they seemed to fall into a rut. NB they are probably awesome live.
EDIT: in fact I wrote something similar for Everything2, dated 18 September 2001:
It’s been years since I played those CDs - I really should pull them out and re-listen - but as I recall it I deleted all of the talking. I’m pretty good a digital editing.
I love instrumental music, I play in/compose for an instrumental band; music does not need voices. I find talking during music extremely distracting.
Here’s another protip, easy to do: On The Gift by the Velvet Underground, the story is on one channel and the music is on the other. You can simply delete the talking track and convert the mono music track to stereo, resulting in a great Velvets instrumental track.
ETA: Just to be clear, I ripped the official CDs to wave files, edited on computer, and burned new CDs.
GY!BE and Mogwai are two of my favorite bands. That said, I never really listen to them. It’s like magic, perfect background music. If I’m writing or painting or doing any other task that takes concentration, that type of music is absolutely amazing for putting me in the right headspace. I get distracted too easily in silence (especially since I live in a noisy area).
seem to be into the same stuff I was tripping to, like, 45 years ago!