Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music is often classified as post-rock, and when talking about this band I think it's important to open with some information about the genre in itself. Post-rock as a term was coined sometime during the early 90's, or even as far as the late 80's to describe jazz-influenced rock with focus on timbre and progressive melodies. You had bands like Talk Talk, Tortoise and even Slint being lumped in the same genre which doesn't quite make the sound of "first wave post-rock" very apparent, even if jazz-influences and timbre are the main connectors somehow.
Now Godspeed You! were the band that came to make the transition from first-wave into the well known and probably most popular form of post-rock, namely the second-wave. This wave was almost completely dominated by Canadian bands from the Montreal-area and mainly from different band members related to Godspeed You! which came to be the connecter amongst bands like Silver Mt Zion, Fly Pan Am and HRSTA. The second-wave came to be mainly from Godspeed's second full length (an album which I'll get to in a later review) but this record, F#A#infinity, was the one that started the transition into the second wave.
For those unaware, this record might seem like an odd one. It's an album built upon three long songs, all with a play time of over 15 minutes, containing drawn out passages, spoken word, and a heavy focus on strings alongside the ordinary drums and guitar. There are no sung vocals and most of this record, aswell as most of Godspeed's other releases sound a bit like a modern day rock band attempting to recreate something classical and orchestral, with 20 minute symphony's containing a huge band lineup and lots of different instruments, even if it is rooted in the modern day guitar, drums and bass.
The Dead Flag Blues opens up the album with the few spoken lines of the record. A man is retelling his encounter with a dystopian, destroyed world, speaking of the destruction of crumbling buildings, the empty burning cars on the driveway as a pair of haunting strings come in to take over the retelling of the story for him. It's one of my favorite uses of spoken word in music and it does a phenomenal job at both capturing the desolate atmosphere of something akin to Cormac McCarthy's The Road or something along the lines of the nuclear wasteland's from the Fallout games. The opening line of "The car's on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel" holds an almost iconic place in modern rock music as its spoken over a pair of heavy drones. About six minutes in, the man leaves us as the sound of a train enters the frame. This is where the song enters its second suite, opting for a more progressive and evolving way, going from a pair of sparse guitar chords into a more fully orchestrated place.
The Dead Flag Blues is an experience, a journey through dark and brooding imagery and haunting spoken word. It's one of the best examples of what Godspeed You! Black Emperor were to be capable of during their career, which is still ongoing.
The second track is the last one on the original vinyl release of the record, where East Hasting closes of a couple minutes earlier than it does on the CD-version that most people are familiar with, as it sets into the locked groove that has given the album its name. F# into A# into a locked groove that repeats it in its entirety. It's an idea that can be read into and interpreted in many different ways, possibly as how the dystopic nightmare of the apocalypse goes on forever, or that of a never ending journey. I personally don't think its supposed to be seen as a metaphor or similar, instead being a gimmicky idea that adds some flair to the record.
Both East Hasting and Providence share a similar buildup, being focused on a shapeshifting track that reaches and reaches until it finally reaches the crescendo that it's built around, reaching a certain climax like many other classical works also intended, which is what leads me to the comparison between the two. Be it through the suddenly hectic strings on East Hastings, the change in pace and tempo as suddenly the world is bursting at its seems, or how the electric guitars come in like galloping horses on Providence, as a burning army alongside the harmonius strings, it is these climaxes that are the main force of Godspeed's music and its also these that have inspired and shaped the genre for almost two decades.
This kind of crescendo-based post rock is what further would lead the genre into the "third-wave" which is mostly monkeying after Godspeed's music while shortening the track lengths down to only really fit in short buildups and strong, lasting crescendos. It's a kind of music that I'm not particularly huge on seeing as it's mostly just the same but for people with no patience. It loses so many of the elements that makes Godspeed's music great and completely wrecks the idea of classical orchestral based rock music.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut LP is a phenomenal work and one of my all time favorites. It's beauty meets chaos in an original and unique way which hadn't really been done in a similar fashion when it was first released in 1997. It was a ground breaking record who's influence is still heard of today even if they were going to shape the mold even more in the three coming years. It's one of the staple albums for post-rock and while it's an unfortunate bit down the list in my opinion, it doesn't really remove any of its impact on modern musical history.
F#A#oo
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
8/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
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