A Quare Name But Great Stuff

IN GODSPEED You Black Emperor s book of revelations, the end times will arrive in slow, beautiful, deafening waves; a tsunami of sound heralding seas on fire, skies charred with chemicals, sinking land masses circled by beady-eyed seabirds, and a thousand teary newscasters all chorusing, God help us all . . .
Jesus, what is it with these Canadians?
In the 1999 movie Last Night, Canuck director Don McKellar documents the final six hours of a handful of people preparing for an unspecified apocalyptic event which will befall the planet at midnight. If I may presume to speak for the group (and as they won t speak to us, I have to) this is very much GYBE territory. The collective may protest that the world is no closer to gasping its last now than it was in 1918 or 1952, but they still explore the same pocked wasteland Tom
Waits clod-hopped upon in Earth Died Screaming except without the light relief of comic surrealism.
Godspeed are violent quietists whose works are tattooed with the rantings of government-hatin , gun-bearing, armagideon-Bible-bashing end-of-timers gone off the grid. Paranoid about the proliferation of public surveillance cameras and police powers in their native Montreal, and struck by the profundities of conspiracy theorists, homeless schizophrenics and extremists of all stripes ( They usually have more to say about the unconscious reaction to living in this ridiculous power structure than most people do, guitarist Efrim once said), they provide the soundtrack to a North America turning blue, then black. Politically as much as sonically, they may be the most important band in the west in the year 2000.
None of which means they ll necessarily grant interviews, issue press kits or even give full details of their line-up. Our desire to remain anonymous isn t a contrivance, it comes from a position of distrust, self protection and shyness, David Bryant told The Wire in September 98. Years ago, when we were younger, the bands we liked weren t written about in glossy magazines. The only information available was contained on record sleeves and inserts. Every band seemed to have a mystique then. By July 99, Efrim was telling the NME, If I want to have an awkward conversation with people about things I hold to be self-evident, I ll go to my parents .
Godspeed You Black Emperor began in 1994 in Quebec, playing illegal bring-your-own-beer shows in their rehearsal space and releasing a limited edition (very limited 33 copies) cassette entitled All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling, including titles like Perfumed Pink Corpses From The Lips Of Ms Celine Dion . The latest line up, including glockenspiel, three guitars, bass, drums, percussion, tape loops, bagpipes, cello and violin, has remained stable for the last couple of years, and their recordings are structured through live improvisations characterised by high volume swells, ebbs and crescendos based on minimalist, repetitive chord sequences, drones, martial beats and bolero rhythm figures.
It ain t post-rock, space-rock, avant garde or hardcore (although the group have expressed the desire to capture the spirit of their favourite American hardcore recordings) rather, it s as elemental as blues. Their sound is haunted by shrill train whistles, their artwork mapped with railway tracks, telegraph poles, open roads, a familiar desolation.
The ensemble s first album proper, f#a#oo, was originally released in a limited vinyl run of 500 on the Constellation label. Following a brief tour of the east coast of Canada and the US in September 1997, Montreal s Brave New Waves radio programme tipped off the folks at the Kranky label, resulting in an extended CD version in 1998. This revamped 64-minute album (including new pieces Dead Metheny and Sad Mafioso ) captivated the Wire-reading fraternity with its echoes of artists as diverse as Ennio Morricone, Kronos Quartet, The Ex, The Velvets, Sonic Youth, The Dirty Three, Savage Republic, Spacemen 3 and 17 Pygmies. That publication s David Keenan perfectly summed up its mystique by invoking Kerouac s end of the land sadness/end of the world gladness .
The two-track, 28-minute EP Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada followed last April. Featuring more field recordings of voices from the wilderness (on Blase Bailey Finnegan III a Providence doomcryer recounts his confrontation with a judge when hauled up for a parking fine, recites anti-state polemic and talks about stockpiling arms), it was one of the top three releases of the year, putting Godspeed up there with Mogwai (who joined them onstage in Glasgow last summer), The Flaming Lips, Spiritualized and Mercury Rev as exponents of a music which exists beyond the conventions of postmodernism and/or classicism, the bricoleurs (Beck, Moby) and the bricklayers (Oasis, Stereophonics).

By this stage, almost everything about the band seems to have acquired talismanic significance: the name, taken from a Japanese motorcycle gang; the album titles like encoded runes; the fact that every vinyl copy of that first album was hand-packaged and included pennies flattened by trains passing behind their domicile/rehearsal space Hotel2tango ( named after the postcode, according to the NME, and not, as excellent rumour has it, some apocalyptic call-sign ) in Montreal s Mile End district.
Ultimately, Godspeed s music, while undoubtedly dark and violent (the group should ve patented the word apocalyptic ) is also devastatingly melancholic, a long, elegiac lament for the decaying west.
Theirs is the final chill-out set at a beach party for Armageddon, as revelry becomes realisation, and the dozens squat on the strand and stare out to sea, gobbling the last of the drugs and waiting for The End to come rolling slowly across the sound.
Godspeed You Black Emperor . . . welcome to their nightmare.
Godspeed You Black Emperor play HQ on Sunday April 2.