Godspeed You! Black Emperor

[Guest TVHEAD]

I love these guys (no homo). All of their albums are REALLY good. Of course, a lot of people thinks that Lift Yr. Skinny Fists is their magnum opus, but I think that the follower was equally good. They released a new album on the 1st of October, listening to it now.

[modey]

I love appreciation threads, but perhaps you should just start a general post-rock/post-metal appreciation thread? Just sayin'

[logakght]

I love appreciation threads, but perhaps you should just start a general post-rock/post-metal appreciation thread? Just sayin'

[Atop]

seeing them on Thursday!!!! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUk! yay!

 

I approve this message

[kaini]

i love the bit where it goes derderderrderrderrderrderrrrrderrrrrderrrrderrrrrderrrrrderrrrDERRDERRRRDERRDERRRDERDERRRDERRDERRDERRRRRDERRDERRRDERR i use to shop in this supermarket, but these automated barcode scanners FUCK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH DERRRDERRRRRRDERRRDERRRRRBEWWWWWWWDERRDERRRRRDERRRRRDERRBEWWWWWWDERRRDERRRRRRDERRREDERRRRderrdeerrderderderderrrrrrrrr ambient noise derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[jhonny]

Lol

[Silent Member]

That is a good one.

[Zephyr_Nova]

seeing them on Thursday!!!! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUk! yay!

 

I approve this message

 

Have you seen them before? Their music live is otherworldly... like their recordings, but you feel like you're swimming in an ocean of it.

[andyb]

Stream their new album from here.

[joshuatxuk]

i love the bit where it goes derderderrderrderrderrderrrrrderrrrrderrrrderrrrrderrrrrderrrrDERRDERRRRDERRDERRRDERDERRRDERRDERRDERRRRRDERRDERRRDERR i use to shop in this supermarket, but these automated barcode scanners FUCK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH DERRRDERRRRRRDERRRDERRRRRBEWWWWWWWDERRDERRRRRDERRRRRDERRBEWWWWWWDERRRDERRRRRRDERRREDERRRRderrdeerrderderderderrrrrrrrr ambient noise derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

 

lol

 

still a fuckload better than explosions in the sky and just about every other fucking post-rock band with stupid-pretentious-statements-as-band-names form which is more like:

 

"pretty guitar riff going nowhere, pretty guitar riff slightly loader, some hi-hat almost a crescendo - nope, back to quiet, slip a minor chord in there, louder again, drums coming in, loud, LOUD, ["OMGDISPARTMAKESMECRYEVERYTIME" - says tweegurl45 on youtube], back to quiet, slower pretty guitar riff going nowhere, throw a cello in there maybe, quiet pretty guitar riff going nowhere, acousticpretty guitar riff going nowhere, and done."

[RichieBees]

pfft post punk is shit and completely uninteresting. gybe are so overrated why dont u guys just post this over at pitchfork

[modey]

All microthread complaints aside, I'm seeing them next year. Gonna be great! I should check out their new album.

[jules]

pfft post punk is shit and completely uninteresting. gybe are so overrated why dont u guys just post this over at pitchfork

 

do you like anything?

 

All microthread complaints aside, I'm seeing them next year. Gonna be great! I should check out their new album.

 

awesome. the new album is stuff they had been playing live.

[joshuatxuk]

I like Mogwai because they don't do this shit over and over. and because they employ distortion and effects in ways that many noodly post-rock bands are too pussy to do. and because their music crushes live even more than it does on the record (the Special Moves live album is amazing, check it out). and because they're just ordinary blokes who've been doing their thing for longer than "scene" bands who will disappear tomorrow uneventfully. and for more reasons...

 

I try to refrain from using the phrase "post-rock", because it doesn't really describe a sound, rather it only tells you what it's not (i.e. not typical rock). I mean, Stereolab and Mogwai are both called post-rock but their sound is quite different.

 

I'm with you. I'm mostly speaking of mid-2000s derivative bands - Explosions (more vastly overrated than anything), 65daysofstatic, Do May See Think, God is an astronaut, This Will Destroy You, Album Leaf, etc. I get the appeal to a degree, for instance I latched onto Mono and love many of their songs to this day, but I can't deny much of their discography is quite dull after awhile. And personally, I find them a bit more musically interesting than a band like Explosions, which is almost always uplifting quiet/loud. I've also seen This Will Destroy You live, and enjoyed it (they're a local band for me) but even then I can't say their studio albums are ground-breaking or amazing.

 

I'd lump Mogwai with older post-rock like the bands you mentioned. The ones I tend to stick with often overlap into other genres anyway - I couldn't simply lump Sigur Ros as "post-rock" for example. And there are bands like Russian Circles that take from post-rock and merge it with metal, or as anothter example Appleseed Cast, which was an mid-90s emo band before they branched out. Like many genres (emo, dubstep), the original artists of post-rock are often diverse groups lumped under one description: Tortiouse, Stereolab, Mogwai, Godspeed, Seefeel, Cul De Sac, Pram - before the genre became a predictable template. It was intended as a broad descriptive term when Simon Reynolds coined it, not a unified scene or movement or anything like that.

[jules]

i guess i need to check out mogwai, i have always ignored them for some reason

[modey]

65daysofstatic derivative? I think they're one of the more interesting bands to come out of the post-rock 'movement'. They've always had a prominent IDM edge—their early stuff was essentially melodic breakcore with live guitars.

[jhonny]

i guess i need to check out mogwai, i have always ignored them for some reason

 

You should do, they're consistently great and aged well.

[jhonny]

I like Mogwai because they don't do this shit over and over. and because they employ distortion and effects in ways that many noodly post-rock bands are too pussy to do. and because their music crushes live even more than it does on the record (the Special Moves live album is amazing, check it out). and because they're just ordinary blokes who've been doing their thing for longer than "scene" bands who will disappear tomorrow uneventfully. and for more reasons...

 

I try to refrain from using the phrase "post-rock", because it doesn't really describe a sound, rather it only tells you what it's not (i.e. not typical rock). I mean, Stereolab and Mogwai are both called post-rock but their sound is quite different.

 

I'm with you. I'm mostly speaking of mid-2000s derivative bands - Explosions (more vastly overrated than anything), 65daysofstatic, Do May See Think, God is an astronaut, This Will Destroy You, Album Leaf, etc. I get the appeal to a degree, for instance I latched onto Mono and love many of their songs to this day, but I can't deny much of their discography is quite dull after awhile. And personally, I find them a bit more musically interesting than a band like Explosions, which is almost always uplifting quiet/loud. I've also seen This Will Destroy You live, and enjoyed it (they're a local band for me) but even then I can't say their studio albums are ground-breaking or amazing.

 

I'd lump Mogwai with older post-rock like the bands you mentioned. The ones I tend to stick with often overlap into other genres anyway - I couldn't simply lump Sigur Ros as "post-rock" for example. And there are bands like Russian Circles that take from post-rock and merge it with metal, or as anothter example Appleseed Cast, which was an mid-90s emo band before they branched out. Like many genres (emo, dubstep), the original artists of post-rock are often diverse groups lumped under one description: Tortiouse, Stereolab, Mogwai, Godspeed, Seefeel, Cul De Sac, Pram - before the genre became a predictable template. It was intended as a broad descriptive term when Simon Reynolds coined it, not a unified scene or movement or anything like that.

 

DMST definitely aren't a 'mid 2000's derivative band'. Goodbye Enemy Airship... is a classic and came out in 2000. I saw them support Godspeed in 2002 and it was the best gig I've ever been to.

 

The reason I got in to post rock when I was younger was because the influences were quite diverse. I was massively into Tortoise, Godspeed, Talk Talk, Mogwai and Bark Psychosis. It got me into ambient music, IDM, noise, classical, rock and metal. From listening to mostly Radiohead and Blur I suddenly discovered shit loads of music. However after then post-rock quickly became a parody of itself and it boiled down to crescendos and TV music. Apart from Mogwai (who aren't really 'post-rock' any more) I haven't listened to much in recent years but the Godspeed album is such a good blast of why I loved them in the first place.

 

I think you ignored some of the worst 'derivative post-rock' bands, Yndi Halda, Mono, Red Sparrowes.

[kaini]

i woulda said start with come on die young, it's pretty much their defining work.

[jules]

nice thanks usagi

[joshuatxuk]

I like Mogwai because they don't do this shit over and over. and because they employ distortion and effects in ways that many noodly post-rock bands are too pussy to do. and because their music crushes live even more than it does on the record (the Special Moves live album is amazing, check it out). and because they're just ordinary blokes who've been doing their thing for longer than "scene" bands who will disappear tomorrow uneventfully. and for more reasons...

 

I try to refrain from using the phrase "post-rock", because it doesn't really describe a sound, rather it only tells you what it's not (i.e. not typical rock). I mean, Stereolab and Mogwai are both called post-rock but their sound is quite different.

 

I'm with you. I'm mostly speaking of mid-2000s derivative bands - Explosions (more vastly overrated than anything), 65daysofstatic, Do May See Think, God is an astronaut, This Will Destroy You, Album Leaf, etc. I get the appeal to a degree, for instance I latched onto Mono and love many of their songs to this day, but I can't deny much of their discography is quite dull after awhile. And personally, I find them a bit more musically interesting than a band like Explosions, which is almost always uplifting quiet/loud. I've also seen This Will Destroy You live, and enjoyed it (they're a local band for me) but even then I can't say their studio albums are ground-breaking or amazing.

 

I'd lump Mogwai with older post-rock like the bands you mentioned. The ones I tend to stick with often overlap into other genres anyway - I couldn't simply lump Sigur Ros as "post-rock" for example. And there are bands like Russian Circles that take from post-rock and merge it with metal, or as anothter example Appleseed Cast, which was an mid-90s emo band before they branched out. Like many genres (emo, dubstep), the original artists of post-rock are often diverse groups lumped under one description: Tortiouse, Stereolab, Mogwai, Godspeed, Seefeel, Cul De Sac, Pram - before the genre became a predictable template. It was intended as a broad descriptive term when Simon Reynolds coined it, not a unified scene or movement or anything like that.

 

DMST definitely aren't a 'mid 2000's derivative band'. Goodbye Enemy Airship... is a classic and came out in 2000. I saw them support Godspeed in 2002 and it was the best gig I've ever been to.

 

The reason I got in to post rock when I was younger was because the influences were quite diverse. I was massively into Tortoise, Godspeed, Talk Talk, Mogwai and Bark Psychosis. It got me into ambient music, IDM, noise, classical, rock and metal. From listening to mostly Radiohead and Blur I suddenly discovered shit loads of music. However after then post-rock quickly became a parody of itself and it boiled down to crescendos and TV music. Apart from Mogwai (who aren't really 'post-rock' any more) I haven't listened to much in recent years but the Godspeed album is such a good blast of why I loved them in the first place.

 

I think you ignored some of the worst 'derivative post-rock' bands, Yndi Halda, Mono, Red Sparrowes.

 

I stand corrected about DMST! Mistake to include them and I had no idea they were that old. It's really cool that older post-rock was a springboard for you to discover other music. It's interesting reading how watmmers stumbled into the music we all (well most of us) seem to collectively enjoy.

 

I'm not familiar with Yndi Halda nor Red Sparrowes. Mono is a guilty pleasure of mine but I agree, they deserve mention for being cookie-cutter. I haven't found any of their last three albums very memorable.

 

Have I mentioned that I joked about forming a Hunger Games tribute post-rock band called "may the odds be forever in your favor?" Some quick fad money to be made off itunes for sure when the next movie comes out.

[baph]

I'd lump red sparrowes in as a guilty pleasure, too. They definitely confined themselves to the "post rock" formula, but as musicians they were much more competent and interesting than Explosions ever were. I mean, share band members with Isis and throw in a pedal steel guitar and that shit's going to at least sound good!

 

That said, when their second album sounded exactly like their first album, it was so easy to see how formulaic it was.

 

Explosions were always sort of terrible and obvious and limited, IMO.

 

Godspeed retains a special place. A deserved place. Still need to hear new album. Need time. Eurghh

[jhonny]

"Our cities are broke, they lay patches on top of patches of concrete, our forests cut down and sold to make newspapers just to tell us about traffic that we get stuck in"

 

http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/music/2012/oct/11/godspeed-black-emperor-interview-full-transcript

[jhonny]

the ending of the interview is just fantastic!

 

As a member of a dance group – 10 women, democratically run – I know full well how hard it is to agree on anything. How does Godspeed operate as a community?

Your car breaks and you take it to the garage – dirty room, five mechanics maybe, car keys hung on nails next to the front counter. Two cars on lifts, one car in the corner, all the other cars parked in the back. Everything and everybody is covered in grease, everyone's smoking like crazy. They have to fix 20 cars before 5pm, or else the backlog will fucking break everybody's back until Christmas. The parts suppliers roll in every half-hour or so, mostly bringing new brake pads and flex-hoses, but bumpers sometimes, oil-pans, headlight assemblies or timing belts.

In a good garage, the whole mess of it almost collapses all day long. Dudes yell and argue, everything's going wrong and why are we doing this anyways? The hose won't fucking fit, or the screwdriver slips and you lose the hose-clamp somewhere beneath the undercarriage. The sun starts to set and the floor gets littered with burnt bulbs, spent gaskets, oil, and sweat, and brake fluid. Someone's hungover, someone's heartbroken, someone couldn't sleep last night, someone feels unappreciated, but all that matters is making it through the pile, the labour is shared and there's a perfect broken poetry to the hammering and yelling, the whine of the air compressor kicking to life every five minutes or so.

It all seems impossible. But somehow we make it through the pile. The cars run again. The cars drive away. Rough day but now it's done, and everything's fine; everything's better than fine. Tomorrow we'll do it all over again. You deal with the Volvo, I'll deal with the Toyota. Heat and noise. All day, every day, until it's quiet again. We fix cars until we die. We love fixing cars.

Do people like me just take you too seriously?

Probably.

[pattern recognition]

"Things are not OK. Music should be about things are not OK, or else shouldn't exist at all."

 

i now understand why they don't do interviews.