SOUNDTRACK: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR-‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! [CST081] (2012).
After ten years, GY!BE came back with a new album. It fits on one CD, but, just to be different, the band released the vinyl as one 12″ and one 7″ record. The 12″ contains the two longer songs and the 7″ contains the two shorter ones.
“Mladic” (20 minutes) opens with sampled voices: “with his arms outstretched.” Then comes a hurdy-gurdy and violins and droning sounds with incidental guitar notes. This goes on for about 4 minutes before the drums and ringing chords slowly enter the song. By about 6 and a half minutes, a buzzy guitar starts playing a feedback-squalling riff, while a second guitar follows along (in the other ear). And by 7 and a half minutes, the drums begin and the song really takes off. At around 9 minutes a new riff begins, slightly Middle Eastern sounding. The whole band joins in, including some fierce drumming and the song gets bigger and bigger. Then around 11 minutes, everything drops off except for bass and drums. And that’s when the noisy chaotic guitar solos begin. Things slow down, but don’t great less intense. And then at 14 and a half minutes, everything pretty much drops out save a cello and feedback. But that’s only a precursor to the big riff that follows. Things slow down one more time, although it’s more of a quiet rumble with the drums going throughout. And then they launch into the final cascade of music, saving the last 2 minutes for echoes, feedback and a rackety percussion section. It’ fantastic.
“We Drift Like Worried Fire” (20 minutes) opens slowly with pizzicato violin notes and other sounds in the background. A guitar riff starts at around 3 minutes which leads the song in a very different direction. A slow violin plays over the top of the guitar riff. The violin and drums grow more complex and at 6 minutes, the ringing guitar overtakes the rest of the music. At around 8 minutes a series of ringing guitar “solos” enter the song. Combined with the percussive noise and the bass, it’s surprisingly catchy. When everything drops out and there’s simply a violin playing, it seems like the song will end, but no. Guitars play around the violin and then at 12 minutes, a new section develops around a two-note motif and complex percussion. I love the ominous direction the song takes those two notes, and when the steady beat kicks in at 15 minutes, it makes the whole thing that much more intense. It resolves itself into a wonderfully catchy melody. At 17 minutes everything drops away except for a ringing guitar and strings. It seems like it might be an ending coda, but soon enough the drums come back and the song picks up again heading towards a proper climax, complete with crazed drumming that takes us until nearly the end of the song. Another really satisfying conclusion.
The two shorter pieces are on the 7″ disc. “Their Helicopters’ Sing” begins with a droning sound in the background. And nearly all of its 6 minutes sound like screechy violins trying to break through the rumbling drone. It more or less resolves itself by the end of the song into something a bit more tuneful.
“Strung Like Lights at Thee Printemps Erable” is the final 6 minute song. Like “Helicopters” it is primarily a drone song. This one is a little prettier at the beginning, with some delicate notes punctuating the noise, but it’s the screeching violin and feedbacking guitar that really create the noise. By four and a half minutes that all drops away into a gentle, but still disconcerting, drone.
I don’t really love the droney stuff compared to the longer songs. I find the two long songs to be some of their best work. Perhaps if the droney parts were actually a part of the whole piece they would work better.
- Thierry Amar – bass guitar, double bass, cello
- David Bryant – electric guitar, dulcimer, Portasound, kemençe
- Bruce Cawdron – drums, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel
- Aidan Girt – drums
- Karl Lemieux – 16mm frames artwork, photography [new]
- Efrim Menuck – guitar, hurdy-gurdy
- Mauro Pezzente – bass guitar
- Mike Moya – guitar [replaced Roger Tellier-Craig]
- Mauro Pezzente – bass guitar [new]
- Sophie Trudeau – violin, Casio SK-5
- [exit Norsola Johnson – cello]
[READ: April 10, 2016] “Hackles”
This issue of The Walrus was pretty bleak and this story is similarly bleak (what’s going on in Canada?).
The story is about a woman (told in first person) and her reflections back on a summer when she was fifteen, living in Enniskillen. Her memories revolve around two dogs: Mort and Julie. When she first encountered them they were guarding a farm house. They saw her and snarled and growled at her causing her to trip and fall, but they would not cross their property line. She says the thing that amazed her was their self-restraint–they never put one paw onto the road.
She began stopping by, looking at the dogs, for six or seven visits when the farmer’s son happened by. He had come to tell the dogs to stop barking and then her saw her.
She had pointed at the fur standing up on Julie’s back. He said they were her hackles, “they get up when she’s pissed.”
He then invited her up to his house–assuring her that once the dogs accepted her as welcome, they would leave her alone.
She didn’t want to go to the house but she desperately wanted to get near the dogs. She decides to go in, but after that visit, they lost interest in her–she was just part of the scenery.
She basically used Jamie as an excuse to get closer to the dogs. She accepted diner at his house–an ugly dinner with Jamie’s father being cold and nasty and his mother being obedient and deferential. But that night, she got to see something exciting–the dogs had killed a coyote. Jamie tried to stop their bloodshed but she told him to let them go. She relished every second.
She began going to Jamie’s every day. She knew that he wanted her, but she didn’t care. She just enjoyed wandering his property. When her dad realized she was seeing a boy, he gave her a copy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
And then things went south. The dogs had killed a calf–the animals they were there to protect. And the boy’s father said they were giving them away.
They were given to a housing development as watchdogs for the property. This effectively meant she stopped seeing Jamie. Until he called to say that the dogs had escaped.
The story gets much darker from here–especially if you like dogs. The story celebrates their resilience but also seems to be unimpressed by it.
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