We Woke Up One Morning, and Fell a Little Further Down - A Godspeed You! Black Emperor Retrospective - Pt. -1: All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling
If you saw this release coming, I straight up don’t believe you.
How could you have seen it? We had been told, over and over again, that the only way we were getting this album was by way of a leak. The band didn't want this on their record, and went out of their way to bury it. This would be fine if the leaks were plentiful, which they were not. Every one was either a fake or a dead end. Users of Reddit will remember the casketjack incident of 2013, a man who claimed to have a tape only to disappear into the ether. The message was clear, we weren't getting it.
Except, of course, we did. Officially, even.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear going into this. Everything that you have heard from the band over the years about this album is true. They have claimed that it isn’t a Godspeed record due to the major diversions it takes from the standard template. However, this is where I deviate. I wouldn’t go quite that far.
This album is still Godspeed, bits and flashes of the band we will come to know appear throughout the album, but it is in a half-formed state. Understandable, the band recorded this on no budget with the understanding that this may be their last chance to record anything, but it holds true regardless.
Still, don’t let this previous paragraph fool you, this is a fundamentally weird album. Weird even by the standards of this band which, if you’ve been paying attention, says quite a bit. It is full of little digressions and field recordings that don’t seem to go anywhere, there are folk ballads sung by Efrim, which might excite fans of the side project Silver Mt. Zion, but the lyrics are often rambling and confused, and the singing and lo-fi nature of the recording tend to garble much of the already garbled songs.
The result is that All Lights begins to feel a little bit less like a true Godspeed album and more like an archival release; something along the lines of the Pet Sounds sessions or the Esher demos; a half-formed release that listens like a blueprint of something more interesting to come. You can hear the beginnings of what would become The Sad Mafioso on tracks like the brief Shot Thru Tubes, their experiments in noise with the intro to Three Three Three and the track Beep, and even some tracks that would be completely irrepresentative of what the band would do, like the shoegazy Diminishing Shine. It’s the kitchen sink approach to album creation that can only come from a bunch of weirdos who never expected to get famous.
Truthfully, there is little I can say that would change your opinion of this album. If you don’t know about this, here you go, now you know what to expect. If you do know about this, you probably already downloaded it or bought it. I know I did as soon as I found out. It’s the final frontier of Post Rock, the weird beginnings of one of the biggest, most talented, and longest lasting bands in the genre; for that reason alone, if you’re a fan, it’s worth the listen.
We woke up one morning and fell a little further down - a Godspeed You! Black Emperor retrospective - Pt. 4: Yanqui U.X.O.
It’s difficult to imagine now, what with approaching two decades of continuous fighting, but the missile that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom was the shot heard round the world for many years. The American news cycle was choked by references to terrorism, the public could not stop talking about it, and the consequences are still being felt. Point being, if Madonna couldn’t resist talking about the war, how could Godspeed.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this album is that Godspeed were largely left to do their own thing. Produced by the great Steve Albini, who famously produced In Utero, the result is one of the rawest records Godspeed has ever released. The samples and mixing are gone, in their place is a wall of noise.
09-15-00, the album opener, begins quietly and sedately. A guitar and harpsichord slowly fade into audibility, followed by drums and guitar. The cinematic qualities of the previous effort aren’t exactly present here, instead there is the presence of noise. Noise and the crescendo. The usual array of instruments are present, guitar, bass, drums, but the band also makes use of a few curious additions: timpani, harpsichord, and The album notes connect the song to the start of the second Palestinian intifada, in which the state of Palestine fought against the oppression of the Israelis. This is where a curious theme is brought into the Godspeed discography - the revolution. Being anarchists, Godspeed has always been about change, but this is one of the only times that they have been so blunt and open about it. This is music about the oppressed and the downtrodden, those left behind in the wake of capitalism. They will return to this theme later in their discography, but for now just keep this in the back of your head.
Rockets fall on rocket falls, the second track, is much the same. The track opens with an ascending guitar lick that will get stuck in your head in some form. The best way I can describe this track in its entirety is the Rite of Spring as written by early 2000s emo kids. The drums do a ton of work when they do come in and allow the track to accelerate into the build. Distorted guitars disintegrate into an almost classically composed section. If you told me that this track was actually a section from a late Beethoven piece I would have believed you. Woodwinds and guitars fill out the atmosphere of the track to the point where it feels the most soundtrack like without being fully cinematic. However, when the guitars do come back in, it is nothing short of cataclysmic. It feels earthshaking in a way that is difficult to explain. One more build takes us out of this track. It is easily the highlight of the album and one of my personal favorites that the band has ever put out.
Motherfucker = redeemer, the final two part track, has the quietest introduction ever. It feels like a pit orchestra warming up. A lone glockenspiel sounds an A as the rest of the band noodles around. It gives the listener an opportunity to catch their breath before the insanity that is to come. The guitar, when it does come in, builds quickly, augmented by tremolo violin and a rapidly tapping drum section. This is part of the reason why I love Godspeed so much, why so many people love them; even on albums that don’t necessarily have a concept, there is no mindlessness. Every instrument is perfectly placed, every sound has a purpose, nothing is wasted. For as long as these songs are, for as indulgent as they can be, the craft here is nothing short of immaculate. The end of the first build is filled with these stabs of noise that fall from thousands of feet up. This dies away quickly, and is replaced with an atmospheric western section that wouldn’t sound out of place on f#a#. Another reprieve, a moment of tension building to allow the track to rocket back up again. And while it doesn’t immediately, we are given this almost weeping, contemplative section to close out the first part. It is incredibly impactful.
The second part kicks off with a drone that honestly wouldn’t sound out of place on one of Trent Reznor’s many projects. Human voices, are augmented by what sounds like bowed guitars. The drone begins light, but evolves over the course of 5 minutes into something dark, angry, and deranged. This is broken by a baseline that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Tool song. Of course, the more obvious comparison would be Mogwai, another contemporary of the band, but with far less grand ambitions. The build up is similarly intense, but swung to give it a more accelerative feel. The most interesting choice they made was the sudden cut to silence. Literally, it feels like the band unplugged their amps, there isn’t even reverb. There is a hidden track on this album, that takes quite a bit of doing to find. It was released later on Adrian Girt’s sound collage album Droopy Butt Begone as George Bush Cut Up While Talking. It is here that the band’s politics most completely reveal themselves in their music. It is a terrifying collage of sound. Clapping that sounds like static, a George bush speech cut up into something unrecognizable and apocalyptic. It is a lambasting of Bush’s nonsense politics, and the people who bought into it. The man could literally say, “I am against kindness” and you would still cheer. It is a critique that has only grown more and more apt with the current era of American politics.
Yanqui U.X.O is powerful noise rock with a powerful message and, though it wasn’t the most well received upon its release, the shadow of this album has only grown not just due to its compositions, but because, though nobody would know this at the time, this would be the last thing we got from Godspeed for 12 years.
Yanqui U.X.O (CD)
I have to say, for all of the incredible releases Godspeed has put out, this is the one that I have the least fondness for. Part of the reason why Yanqui U.X.O. is still regarded as Godspeed’s worst is, I feel, due to the press receiving the CD version rather than the Vinyl version. It is not bad, godspeed has no bad album, rather it is incomplete. To borrow a comparison from video games, it is the handheld port of the console release. The only track that remains untouched is rockets fall on rocket falls, the remainder of the album is split up or heavily truncated. Motherfucker = redeemer loses the ambient intro and plunder phonics outro that helps to form the thesis for the entire album, and 09-15-00 loses its monolithic nature. In total, over 8 minutes of music is cut from the cd release.
Honestly, I would rather listen to a vinyl rip as opposed to the CD version. You can skip this one.
We woke up one morning and fell a little further down - a Godspeed You! Black Emperor retrospective - Pt. 3: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
Godspeed assembled their second album from the same building blocks as the first, but approached it from a much more high level view. The pure eye for composition present on f#a# is present, but is augmented by a touch of cinematic that gives this album, if not a definitive storyline, then a definitive arc. There are four tracks on this album, each over 20 minutes long and comprised of several movements.
The opening of this album is a beautiful build. It starts off almost completely quiet, a lightly plucked guitar and horns pushed deep into the mix allow the early track to breathe. Slowly, more and more instruments are added to the build, escalating almost to the point of insanity. Every time you think the build is over, they find another melody or playing trick or instrument to take it one level higher. It’s almost like the build itself can’t handle it as the track seemingly explodes at the end into a stream of scintillating violins slowly floating down.
They float down to a track that almost sounds like amazing grace. In a similar manner this track escalates, though it features far more stings and fuzz guitars. It almost feels like the shout of joy that a newly created world gives. Godspeed are not christian, but this does speak to me on a faith based level. This may be the christian aspects of my education talking, but it’s almost edenic the way everything in this track seems to be in perfect harmony.
The next section is when humanity learns to sin. The amazing grace riff gets cut off at the neck, the strings tremolo in panic. Thudding sounds and wailing flutes lead us into a section where everything is falling to hell. I hope you liked the brightness, it seems to say, because it is all darkness from here on in. The animals are scrabbling for the cliff edge. All is ruined. This is why I say that this album is cinematic, it twists and turns like a movie. It’s almost as though you’re hearing the introduction of a villain or conflicting force.
A sample from a gas station leads into a haunting piano piece. Menueck seems to pound the keys, in a Beethoven-esque cry of anguish. Military radio chatter drones out in the background, the only part of it understandable being, “It’s gonna be a long long time.” And, in a way, the chatter is entirely correct, it will be a long time for the trauma of this to heal. It is the sonic equivalent of looking out at the darkened plains, radio towers stretching into the distance, from the last lit building for miles around. A gas station on the plains your last sign of civilization in black seas of infinity.
The second track walks into that darkness with a drone. This one seems stable, as though the issue isn’t going away any time soon. “It’s gonna be a long long time”, after all. An atomic clock belts out the time in UTC, which leads into a preacher having a mental breakdown. A wailing violin, an upright bass, and a guitar soundtracks this moment. It’s a profoundly sad moment, her words seem even more unbelievable due to the effects on her voice. It’s equivalent to seeing a hobo ranting to God, only in this case that god more than likely isn’t there. Moments like these make me doubt Godspeed’s connection to Christianity. The band has discussed judaism in connection to their music, and this feels more apt in a Jewish context of faith. The painful absence of God is a major factor in the Kaballistic tradition, and in Judaism as a whole. This leads into a quiet plucked string section reminiscent of F#A#, and this is where the second track’s build becomes overwhelming. Tempo and texture are brought to the fore. The track ends on a drone as well, it’s barely even there, the primordial soup that we all come out of and return to when we die. It’s easily the darkest moment on the album, feeling less like a complete thing and more a handful of transitions. A gallery of people and places at their very lowest.
The third track, sleep, brings in nostalgia. Mourning what is lost. It opens with an elderly man discussing Coney Island, the amusement park in New York that has been relegated to a shadow of its former self. Its primary emotion is sadness for what has been lost. As detailed by the following section with a long slow build to a beautiful crashing conclusion. An inner city western not out of place in the road. One thing that I haven’t really mentioned in any detail is Mike Moya and Efrim Menueck’s screwdriver guitar technique. It can be very difficult to do these sounds in a way that is interesting or easy to digest, but their combination of effects make the guitar sound like singing almost. It seems almost a part of this grand tradition that most independent musicians have participated in where they make their guitars sound like anything but guitars. The true highlight of this track is the second build. It is the breaking of the dawn after the fall to the darkness, the moment where hope pushes back against the doom and gloom. A glockenspiel, like a point of light in the distance, announces its presence against a carpet of droning blackness. The rest of the track is one massive build, the last push to restore the old world, good and bad. From this point forward, hope is the primary emotion.
If sleep is the climax, the fourth and final track, antennas to heaven, is the denouement. The end of this album will make you cry. Just accept it now. It’s just a brilliantly done ending. Despite a strange folk rock opening, where Mike Moya sings a folk song about abusing an infant, we transition into a drone. Far lighter than any other drone on the album, it relaxes and uplifts rather than oppressing. The middle section of this track, “she dreamt she was a bulldozer…”, is your reward for making it through the darkness that is this album. The violin section in this track is almost saccharine, in many ways, it’s the best song Explosions in the Sky never made. The ending of this album is a beautiful float down to peace, it gently leaves you and allows you to return to reality.
It is difficult to escape the idea that Lift Your Skinny Fists is a concept album. However, it is not a concept album in the way that Ziggy Stardust or Good Kid Maad City is a concept album. Instead, Lift Your Skinny Fists serves as a brilliant soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist. A film that is full of heroes and villains, saviors and savants, tragedy and triumph. But ultimately, as Godspeed is want for, packed to the brim with hope. It is a hope that they would throw to the side to explore the musical aspects of their style in the follow up.
The Tumble Into the Void - Everywhere at the End of Time by The Caretaker
Perhaps the most impactful conversation I’ve ever had with my grandfather was the time I asked him about his mother’s dementia. He confessed that he never really understood what it was like to have dementia; why his mother would constantly call for them despite knowing they were only around the corner. That changed when, as part of his work at Sears, he took a trip to the Netherlands. At some point in the evening, he got separated from his friends and was left alone in the busiest part of Amsterdam. In his words, “I looked around, and it wasn’t that I didn’t know where I was, it was the realization that I never knew where I was, that I had no way of figuring out where I was, and that I was utterly helpless.” In that moment, he understood.
The closest I’ve come to understanding is listening to this.
Leyland James Kirby has made a career of chopping the familiar into the horrifying: from his earliest noise experiments as V/VM, his subversion of country as Billy Ray Cyrix, his perversions of Christmas music as Butcher Claus, to his more etherial projects as The Caretaker, Kirby has an interest in taking familiar and friendly sounds and perverting them into something awful. Everywhere At the End of Time is a sonic art piece detailing the collapse of the human mind that is created due to dementia. Over the course of the six and a half hour journey, we see memories fade, twist, and warp to the point where they are unrecognizable, before the void swallows all in the end. However, you should know going into this that I initially bounced off this album quite a few times. Each stage sounds similar enough to the previous one that differences are hard to determine or even notice at first. This is an intentional feature of the album, dementia sneaks up on sufferers, but it does lead to this album being a bit of a slog to get through. It’s best to approach this project like European art cinema; the kind of thing that is difficult to get through, but is rewarding to the patient, attentive audience. This is not an easy listen, not by a long shot, but it is a worthy listen. Each album functions in turn as a different stage, and each one has a different sonic characteristic, ranging from familiar to completely avant-garde.
Stage 1 is by far the most accessible of the stages. I’ve heard it described before as, “vaporwave for boomers” and that seems as fitting a description as any. Both have to do with degradation and looping; the main difference being while vaporwave’s distortion is of a digital nature, Stage 1’s distortion is of a completely analog nature; surface noise, clicks, pops, the sounds of degraded 78rpm records. The first three albums follow this template, but each one adds slightly more distortion. Gaps get longer, surface noise becomes more pronounced. What sounded like a peaceful campfire on stage 1 will, by stage 3, have become completely overwhelming to the music. Samples and themes are used repeatedly, but always in a more heavily distorted fashion, leaving the listener with a sense that these tracks are familiar, but you can’t place where they came from. The first stage represents the bliss of the beginning, the last of the good days as the album description puts it. Stage 2 is when you realize somethings wrong, and stage 3 is when you begin to lose the battle for lucidity. This transition happens so slowly that, unless you’re listening closely, you might not even realize that it’s happening. This may be enough to test people who don’t regularly listen to avant-garde music, but the album saves the true horror in knowing for the second half.
Stages 4, 5, and 6 are abstract noise and drone pieces, but to explain them in those cold, clinical terms is to undersell them. These stages are a trip into hell. The samples come through but they are scrambled enough to be unrecognizable. They flow, collide in odd ways, force you to confront how far you’ve fallen into the abyss. When the grey mist rolls in, there is no more time for reflection or recollection, there is only confusion and pain. The unfamiliar begins to feel like an old friend, and the familiar feels foreign and alien. This is the album’s true test, as if the album is saying, “ok, we’ve had fun, but good luck with this.” Stage 4 and Stage 5 are by far the most difficult listens. These albums activated my fight or flight response, I wanted to escape from these albums, turn them off, go literally anywhere else. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing yet. I actually bounced off these albums the first time through, but forcing yourself to listen carefully and pay attention to the details is incredibly rewarding. By contrast, stage 6 comes as a relief, despite being labeled without description. But, perhaps, relief is too strong a word, it’s more the final calm before the end comes. We are in the belly of the beast when stage 6 begins. It is peaceful, in a way; not the peace that comes with drifting off to sleep, but the peace in realizing that you can’t prevent the inevitable, no matter how terrible it may be. The peace in dying from cancer, knowing and accepting that your life is coming to an end, but still being scared of what is to come, even if what is already here hurts. The last five minutes of stage 6 utterly broke me. It’s one of three times I’ve teared up listening to music (the other times being listening to Blackstar after Bowie’s death, and listening to American 4 for the first time.) I won’t spoil it here, it is something you must experience for yourself: your final reward for sitting through the hell that is this album.
Everywhere At the End of Time is a titanic achievement in sound. We often say that music can give you feelings you can’t experience anywhere else, and nowhere is it more clear than in The Caretaker’s final opus. I highly recommend it; it’s only six dollars through his band camp page, and his other albums are just as fairly priced, some even being free. Just be warned what you’re getting into: none who encounter the emptiness emerge the same again.
As a music critic, particularly a critic in the Indie scene, it can be tantamount to suicide to say that you don’t get an album or an artist, especially when that artist is beloved by many and arguably launched a genre on their own. Which is why it’s hard for me to admit that, for the longest time, I didn’t get Grimes.
Which is a shame, because, much like Billie, Grimes is an interesting force of personality by herself. Hailing from Vancouver, Grimes has produced some of the most interesting left of the dial content in indie pop, and nowhere is this more visible than on Visions.
This album is the soundtrack to being at a party and wishing that you were anywhere else. Tracks such as Vowels = Space and Time do a good job at tapping into this strange, swirling anxiety. While the verses are almost about spending time with a lover, the lover that Grimes is referring to seems to be herself. “Being myself makes me feel like I can’t touch the ground Here on the earth makes me feel like I can’t get the sound, Being myself makes me feel like I know who you are.” This is to say nothing of the stellar Oblivion, one of her most popular songs. It almost seems on this song that she wants to treat love like a game, like so many others, but she just keeps getting caught in a cycle of falling hard and leaving fast. “Playing the deck above, It’s always different, I’m the one in love.”
This is to say nothing of the eclectic and strange production. It feels like if Beach House and Com Truise got together to make a pop band. The result is one of the strangest, yet most satisfying listens ever. Be a Body is a great example of this album’s style, sharp synthesizers and a driving bass beat acting as great counterpoint to Grimes’ pillowy, misty voice.
Overall, I’d say Visions is a great listen from front to back, whether you’re looking to relax or to turn up. If you’re looking for something more experimental than Lorde but not as esoteric as Bjork, you could do a whole lot worse than Grimes.
I know that top 5 season has come and gone much like the cold and flu season, but I caught the tail end of it, so now I can release my version. You’ll notice a distinct lack of a worst list, this is by design. I’d rather elevate albums I discovered this year that I liked because, let’s face it, sometimes your album of the year is the one you find not the one that was released. All of these might not have a review, so you can consider these rapid fire reviews. 1-2 sentences, highlights, who did this, and why I liked it. Let’s go.
Top 5 of 2019
5. Xiu Xiu – Girl with Basket of Fruit
One of the most twisted albums of this year. Nothing about this album is pretty, but its message rings true even today. Mary Turner Mary Turner turned me Antifascist and Antiracist.
4. Slauson Malone – A Quiet Fairwell 2016 – 2018
The Marsalis family does it yet again with this fascinating tribute to sample based hip hop, glitch, field recordings, and lo-fi hip hop. I can’t wait to see what Jasper does next.
3. Tyler the Creator – Igor
One of the most interesting breakup albums I have ever heard, mostly because I didn’t initially gather that it was a breakup album. One of Tyler’s most commercial releases, and one that seems to project a new direction for the man. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
2. Charli XCX – Charli
At this point, Boom Clap seems like a distant memory for everyone’s favorite Lorde clone. This album is poppy, yes, but also totally unmarketable, and it achieves this by polishing its pop sensibilities to a mirror shine, and from there just continuing. The result is an album that feels like the 80′s never ended, and the dystopic future is shiny and chrome. Give it a shot.
1. Clipping – There Existed an Addiction to Blood
Personally, I feel that the album of the year not because it is flawless, or the most technically proficient, but simply because I personally enjoyed it the most. Daveed Digs has a talent for writing songs that just get lodged in your head and never get out. The horror sensibilities give this album a lyrical and storytelling edge that very few hip hop albums have.
Top 5 I discovered
5. Klaatu – 3:47 EST
This one came out of left field to me. I’ve heard this band was mistaken for The Beatles back in 1976 and I can definitely see why, but for the first time I don’t mind the blatant derivative nature of this album. It’s still very lush, pretty, and enjoyable. The only reason it’s so low on the list is because I haven’t listened to it much. Unlike the following.
4. Kamasi Washington – The Epic
You’ll notice that a lot of my discoveries this year are jazz. This is because I got into the genre in a big way. This is the album that did it. A sprawling jazz epic (ha ha) that covers pretty much everything the genre is doing or has been doing in recent years. An absolutely mammoth undertaking by Kamasi and crew and one that keeps making its way to my turntable despite it’s 3 hour runtime.
3.John Coltrane – Giant Steps
Duh. One of the most technical and influential Jazz albums of all time. Also really pleasant to listen to. Only reason it’s so low is because it’s been done to the point of commonality.
2. Miles Davis – Big Fun
Really interesting compilation album. Feels like a less paranoid, looser, and more fun Bitches Brew. One of Davis’s most underrated releases.
1. Grimes – Visions
What can I say? Really high quality pop album that feels like it’s from another planet. I’m really sad I slept on Grimes this long.
I know I be coming home - Splendor and Misery by Clipping.
It’s rare that a rap album can really make me think. This is not a knock on the genre as a whole, but it does seem to have been overflowed by people who want to do nothing but turn up and regret their life choices the next morning. Now, I realize that I am the odd one out here, what with the popularity of trap music on the pop charts, but sometimes you need to sit down. How ironic then that clipping, with their second album, chose to create something so deeply sci-fi and calm that it was nominated for a hugo.
Clipping is producers William Hutson, Johnathan Snipes, and MC Daveed Digs, who if you are a certain type of user on this site you will know played Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette in the Broadway production of Hamilton. The group had one ep, one mixtape, and one album under their belt when they decided to take a more narrativic style of produciton. Compared to 2014’s CLPPNG album, Splendor and Misery is a cinematic and densely layered album.
The album is a comparatively short 37 minutes long, but it uses every part of the buffalo to create a claustrophobic, noisy, chaotic, but deeply affecting listen. The album tells the story of a black man stuck on a ship looking for a place to call home. A slave spaceship. The only name we have for him is Cargo #2331. He is the last survivor of an intergalactic slave rebellion described in the album’s second track, The Breach. The entire album is a black man searching for a place to call his own. Considering the history of the African American people, the parallels should be obvious.
As opposed to the hyper performance seen on CLPPNG, the band keeps the arrangements of the beats rather minimal. Metallic droning, bending metal, and deep bass hits compliment the crushing loneliness our protagonist feels in the deep dark reaches of space. However, Digs’ lyrics maintain their poignancy on tracks such as True Believer or Break The Glass.
Overall, I highly recommend Clipping’s second album. Even if you can’t get behind the politics of the album or the message about the slave trade or what it means to be an African American in America, the album is a great example of Afro-Futurism and a brilliant science fiction story. I hope we get a film version eventually.
No Title As of 9 August 2025 84,000 Dead - A (long overdue) Review of "NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD."
(Before we get started, a note. I am going to be saying some unkind things about the nation of Israel throughout this review, because the facts are prima facia unkind. So I want to make clear; though this be a Jewish friendly page, this is not a Zionist friendly page. If you are non-Zionist, you are welcome here. If you are a non-Zionist Jew, you are welcome here; please do not think my critique of the nation of Israel in any way implicates you, your religion, or your people. If you are Zionist, Jewish or otherwise, I have nothing to say to you.)
It's a pity that the Jewish idea of hell has fallen out of favor, because it means Benjamin Netinyahu cannot go there.
This coming October 7th marks the two year anniversary of the current "conflict" between the nations of Israel and Palestine. You will note that conflict is in quotes, because to call it a conflict at this point is to put lipstick on a genocidal pig.
It has been something of an open secret that the nation of Israel regards the nation of Palestine with, at best, naked contempt. What is occurring in Gaza is an inhumane colonistic slaughter of a people who simply wish to exist in the land of their birth, who have been systematically disenfranchised and villainized by a colonialist government which has been openly planning to wipe them out for years. Any aid into the area is denied, by blockade or by bomb, because Israel wants not just to kill Hamas, but to pave the way for a full takeover of the Gaza strip and the full expulsion of Palestinians. Not to mention the response of the current American Presidential administration.
(To be clear, because I know some of you are going for this gotcha, I'm neither saying that Israel has no right to defend itself, nor that Israel has no right to exist. If that is only what the nation was doing, I would be perfectly fine. However, the official position of the Israeli government seems to be that the people of Palestine are categorically responsible for the actions of Hamas, and are to be treated as such. This, I cannot abide. Furthermore, Israel has a right to exist, but not in Gaza. Blood and soil is a fundamentally fascist argument, and the Jewish people of Israel, of all nations, should know where that leads.)
So, what side would Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a group of Jewish anarchists, take in this?
The fact that Efrim is signing albums with "Free Palestine!" should tell you everything you need to know.
Sorry to bury the lede and give my own perspective on one more horrific thing in this wurlitzer of a world, but this album is entirely inseparable from the political context in which it exists. Which I think is notable for this band.
Godspeed has always been political, my retrospective on the band's output has, I hope, made that clear. But for all their politics, it has always remained firmly couched in the realm of theory. "What should be" as opposed to, "what is." It is all about leaving our individualist present and moving forward to a collectivist future. When they wade into the torturous waters of the now, they are often talking about the state of things, the effects of things that have been going on for decades, general trends.
This album is so clearly and obviously in the now, and specifically about one thing, that it becomes impossible to ignore. To talk about this album without mentioning the current Israeli Palestinian genocide is equivalent to talking about Pink Floyd‘s The Wall without mentioning the biography of Roger Waters; it is missing the point and obfuscating critical information at best. This album is a direct response, almost a companion, to the latest savage beating that Israel has decided to levy on the Palestinian people, the world's crushing non-response, and the continued strength of an oppressed nation. It is the light that illuminates the entire remainder of the music found across the four sides of this record.
We begin with sun is a hole sun is vapors, a drone piece that quickly builds to much much more. The horrific caverns of reverb drenched sound that begin this piece quickly give way to an almost anthemic build. I'm most immediately reminded of anthem for no state off of Luciferian Towers, but whereas that track is more akin to an ironic national anthem for a state that should never exist, this track is a tribute to a nation that is reduced to rubble, bleeding, but still un-cowed. "Palestine survives in the rubble, they are harder to kill than that", this song seems to say.
Babys in a thundercloud returns to a well that Godspeed has been dipping into since their beginning, field recordings. It is the sound of a battle that likely cannot be won, the odds are so deeply stacked against us, but we have to try. If we don't, the future cannot exist.
Raindrops cast in lead speaks to the fear where, at any time, your life can be destroyed by a missile from god. Beginning with recordings of birdsong or squeaking metal underpinned with a steady drone, a delay-soaked theme cuts through. The rain this song speaks to is not the healing rain, but the destructive rain of missiles in Gaza.
Broken spires at dead kapital is a dirge. A funerary procession for what was. It is one of the bleakest tracks Godspeed has ever produced. It sounds broken, cracked, horrifically distorted; a yawning chasm of double bass, reverb, and guitar feedback from which no light can escape. Add on top of it the horrifically sad violin lines of Sophie Trudeau, and the pitch black double bass harmonies of Thierry Amar, and you have one of the most hopeless sounds we have created as a species. This track is turning a corner to see that your home has been hit by a missile, combing through the wreckage of what once was your life, and finding nothing but broken photographs, splintered support beams, and your mother's blood stained clothes.
While you are weeping, sitting shiva, the rubberneckers arrive. Feeding off of your pain, they capture your tear-stained visage with impersonal eyes of glass, but they do not offer any comfort or aid. This feeling is captured beautifully in pale spectator takes photographs. Their presance is announced by the moaning violin line that ends Broken spires. The main section builds and explodes in a manner that suggests a machine revving up. But beneath this, there is intense anger, a bitterness that will not go away. It's the taste of the dust in your mouth as you have your presuppositions confirmed; they don't care about you. They maybe never have. The only use your colonizers have for you, your only notable feature, is your ability to stop existing. You have been fully unpersoned. There is nothing left to be done.
The final track of this album is perhaps the most evocative of Godspeed's later catalogue. The first part, grey rubble, portrays something like a final stand against the powers that be. The second part, green shoots, is the inevitable healing that takes place afterward, extended into brilliant crescendo by the seventh untitled track on the vinyl release. The moment wherein the shells stop for good and the people can return to their lives, however changed they may be. It is the sound of vegetation growing over old shells, the sound of tanks reclaimed by vines, of a bomb crater becoming a little pool for birds to alight in. The barren ground and the broken people will heal no matter what happens. Even if the people of Palestine are forced into diaspora, an outcome looking increasingly likely by the day, Palestine will live on. They will be healed, and no bomb, barrier, or two bit despot can ever take that away. The extra extension to this track on side D of the record release speaks to this, becoming so loud as to almost be unbearable before cutting out, dumping all the emotion of this album right into your lap.
No Title is incredible. On par with some of Godspeed's best. Emotionally evocative and incredibly well done, this album would be an masterpiece without the overarching concept. With the concept, this album becomes a harrowing yet beautiful tribute to a people who have had more than their fair share of pain and suffering.
There is another aspect to this album. As the world slips deeper and deeper into a new dark age, it can be difficult to know what to do. Here is my recipe. Hold onto hope, lean on each other, we are on our own. For now, I leave you with the final part of the band's message that accompanied this album; treat it as instruction for the next four years.
war is coming.
don’t give up.
pick a side.
hang on.
love.
GY!BE
