Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
When the NME reached a certain milestone around the early 2000’s, they had a rare moment of clarity with a “what were we thinking?” feature, as they featured 10 bands the publication regretted putting on the cover. I forget the other 9 but one stuck in my craw; Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the shadowy Canadian post-rock collective who, to me anyway, were making some of the most compelling music at the turn of the century. The NME feature lambasted the band’s anonymity, far-left politics and lack of star presence but what did they expect from a Quebecois collective that outright rejected the music industry’s stale conventions? There were no photo shoots and no interviews given; the band operated as a flat-hierarchy collective. They wrapped their early CD and vinyl releases in hand made, cardboard sleeves, with grainy black and white photographs and illustrations that somehow communicated a vague apocalyptic feeling. They sold no merchandise and showed film loops at their gigs that served as lighting whilst some band members performed sitting down, backs to the audience. Coldplay, they were not.
Whilst they resisted commercialisation of their music; some small notable exceptions were when the band allowed a track to be used at the start of 28 Days later (during the haunting scenes of Cillian Murphy wandering around a deserted London) and throughout the 2003 horror movie documentary The American Nightmare. In both instances, the music perfectly captures the menace and stark beauty of a collapsed society, their music wasn’t set to the nuclear bombs going off, instead it soundtracked the slow dissolution of society; think more Children of Men than Mad Max. The first release by the band (really a solo project at this point), was an ultra limited release EP that was simply given away to friends and family (that was officially re-released in 2022) The second release was the real debut, called F# A# ∞, originally a 2-track vinyl EP that set out as a perfect statement of intent. Originally recorded in 1997 and released on local label Constellation Records, it was partially re-recorded for a CD release by American independent record label Kranky (also home to fellow post-rock bands Stars of the Lid, Pan American and Labraford) and re-released in 1998.
The opening track “Dead Flag Blues” would set the template for the group’s sound over the next few releases. The opening narration is a doom-laden portent for a collapsed world, filled with apocalyptic visions (“it went like this… the buildings toppled in on themselves, mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble, and pulled out hair”). But as the speech goes on, reverb soaked guitars and violins come to life to try and give some hope, like the sun rising above the smoke from city on fire. This is followed by a field recording of some steam trains overlaid with drones. This is something GY!BE would use frequently, whether it’s interviews recorded on the streets or simply industrial sounds, these segments would then work really well as a transition into other tracks (the vinyl version of the album doesn’t show track names, merely musical segments). The echoing final part, brings some elements of country and is maybe the most musically standard sounding part of the album, but that’s not a bad thing.
Some of the more beautiful moments on F# A# ∞ come from these field recordings, like at the start of “East Hastings” with it’s recording of a street preacher backed by mournful bagpipes. The section after this, dubbed “Sad Mafioso” is what appears in 28 Days Later; a gradual build up from a single, mournful guitar line to a crushing, droning finale. But what’s significant is the break half way through, for one of the slight examples of vocals on a GY!BE song, where a gentle “lah lah lah lah” can be heard so quietly. Then once the songs kicks back in, it’s the violins and cellos that provide the dramatic stabs and menacing feel, not the typical brutish rock guitars. The track ends with a cacophony of chiming echoes and an what appears to sound like some pissed off hornets.
The final track “Providence” (specifically added for the CD release) starts with an interview with street preacher Blaise Bailey Finnegan III (who features again on the Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP released a year late), before giving way to a humming drone and disembodied sounds. Then the main body of the song commences, thumping drums and trembling guitars. There’s a brief interlude as a ghostly voice sings “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” before the military beat and swooning guitars come back in for another build up of tension and release. Then there’s another droning, haunting interlude which is where a lot of my enjoyment of GY!BE’s music comes from; it can just sound so otherworldly, these segments sound like broken transmissions from some unknown place. Because this was a CD exclusive track, there’s an extra short snippet of a howling crescendo at the end of the track’s nearly 30 minute run time. Unnecessary, but people back then were just filling out CDs for the sake of it.
GY!BE made their full debut at the tail end of the 1990’s, when what was considered the second-wave of post-rock was emerging. Picking up where bands in the late 80’s and early 90’s left off (groups like Talk Talk, Slint and Tarantel), Tortoise took their experimental approach further by fusing guitar rock with elements like German krautrock, dub reggae, various strains of electronica and the repetition and minimalism of neo-classical composers like Steve Reich. They also ditched the vocals completely and had no issue putting out songs that were 20 minutes long. At the same time, groups like Mogwai, Sigur Rós, Explosions in the Sky and MONO took that style of post-rock and and brought back in more traditional rock ingredients; Mogwai and MONO made guitars the focus of their music, often at punishing volume. So did Explosions in the Sky who made gorgeous, dreamy music that was derided as being “crescendo-core” a reductive but not inaccurate dig at their musical style. Sigur Rós had a vocalist, and sure you had no idea what he was saying, but the bands produced fairly standard songs even though they often sounded like you were being crushed by a glacier and volcano simultaneously.
What Godspeed You! Black Emperor did which was different, was create a unique musical world specific to them. At the tail end of the 90’s, with the rise of anti-capitalist demonstrations and the rise of the internet, the band’s music absolutely tapped into the pre-millennial tensions of the time. It also helped that spin off groups and side projects like A Silver Mt Zion, Exhaust, Fly Pan Am worked in the same sonic realms, alongside with label mates like Do Make Say Think and Sofa. For me, this was the first time, maybe outside of the much more well known UK label Warp Records, that I felt the urge to absolutely find all of a record label’s output, because I knew no one else was making this kind of music. It was lo-fi, seemingly cobbled together from disparate parts but it could still absolutely hold you in it’s grip and haunt you for years.
After releasing another EP and then two full albums, the group then went on hiatus for 10 years, spending the time either in other bands or producing local Montreal groups. When they reformed in 2012 and have put out another four albums. Some of their musical style has become absorbed into the indie rock vocabulary since then. I’ve even seen some interviews with the band members, none of which has dispelled the stark breauty of their early releases.