Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Classic or Dud?

that was also what made the last one great as well, they had p much ditched the samples by then

seeing them tomorrow, happy to get a copy of this before everyone else

fuck me, this is awesome!

GYBE gives in and finally just cribs their album titles from Dr. Bronner labels.

lol

the best gybe record, easy

wish their records were remotely like their live show

hey they finally did it!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbcebkQUGn1qdmmiqo1_500.gif

the best gybe record, easy

Yep. And can't help but notice that it sounds a bit like a streamlined version of the Swans record.

The second half of "We Drift Like Worried Fire" is pretty awesome

setlist tonight in bmore-

Hope Drone
Mladic
Monheim
Behemoth ?
New Song ?
One of the segue songs ?
The Sad Mafioso

This is an instrumental metal album so far!

short tracks are boring
long tracks - pleasure!
though i wonder if i can listen to post rock again in 2012

i dont think they'll ever top skinny fists. this record is coll but it's business as usual. the whole silent release thing was seriously blunted by the leak THE NEXT DAY. how depressing.

here's an article i wrote about godspeed's confused politics and how it softens the blow of their music: http://www.splicetoday.com/music/sins-in-the-corporate-almshouse

the whole silent release thing was seriously blunted by the leak THE NEXT DAY. how depressing.

i'm not sure that it's called a leak when it's already being sold at shows! ;) not commenting either way on what level of hell you end up at for leaking, just saying, it's not quite the same as some record industry insider leaking it 3 weeks before anyone else has heard it or whatever.

also, i agree that the efrim's more holy than thou attitude is irritating, but i never like the argument that, because one find examples of GYBE acquiescing to the corporate world, they're somehow exactly the same as corporate rock stars. i think i'm just a little more sensitive to that because i've had to endure drunk dudes criticizing me for not being a perfect environmentalist and then equating me with someone who owns 3 humvees.

lol whoops, "the efrim". maybe he is holy!

efrim addressed this point in an "open letter" eleven years ago...

anyone wants to punch holes in our politics, go ahead; you wanna say that we don't properly address the paradox of a "political" band making money off of compulsive shoppers or victims of fetish capitalism- guess what, YOU'RE RIGHT! we haven't properly addressed that paradox at all, and we know it and we kinda know why too- if you want to talk to us about that, then go ahead, give us a call, we'd love to talk about it (as long as you can hold up your end of the conversation, as long as you're willing to talk to us about you're own failings, confusions, or epiphanies in the face of this cruel cruel world...)

Streaming in full here: http://pitchfork.com/news/48130-stream-godspeed-you-black-emperors-new-album/

I haven't listened to this band in ~6 yrs...surprisingly the first track is "doing it" for me. Nice drone-y intro, pretty heavy throughout, and about as raw-sounding as it could be without detracting from the overall sound.

Really like the pseudo gamelan outro on Mladic so far.

this is so good
and so good for fall

Now realizing aforementioned pseudo-gamelan outro is likely recording of Montreal student protest drum circle type thing. Feel conflicted.

those protest were really amazing to witness/be a part of, not only students, all kinds of people, including families, in neighbourhoods around the city - and not drum circles but people banging (mostly) on pots and pans

felt a tinge of annoyance when whiney declared this their best because that is a much higher bar than he seems to think it is, but ... this is very, very good.

Chilling with the new one now for the first time. Sounding nice'n'doomy so far. Could definitely see myself listening to this.

Used to love Lift Yr..when I was an angsty 15 year old, stuck photocopies of the inlay booklet onto my GCSE art sketchbook and all that jazz. Classic stuff. And one of my first memories of one of my current housemates is him walking out from his old house into the pitch black garden solemnly intoning 'THE CAR IS ON FIRE, AND THERE'S NO DRIVER AT THE WHEEL' out of nowhere. Halcyon days.

Really like the record...

taking bets on how long it is before i reverse field and admit whiney might've been right

Workin on a review to clarify my point, plz hold

I'm not sure this is their best album, but I think the first track might be their best song.

^^^100% agreeing with this right now.

It's really good, but I miss the more chamber-like movements. Everything on the new one sounds like it was composed to be played live with 9 people.

Mladic is just glorious.

it is. always been a huge fan but I think that song tops Moya as their best song.

"Mladic" is the retitled "Albanian", right? Been listening to this lot since the last century and I still can't get a fucking song title right in my head.

Would really help if they stopped changing the names. Or using fucking DATES as song titles.

and using the "wrong" date format!

Email interview from the Guardian yesterday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/11/godspeed-black-emperor-interview-full-transcript

I thought this was great. Hits just the right balance between wanting to change the world and understanding how things actually work. Couple of the commenters seem to disagree and are apparently disappointed that bands might want to explain how they feel through interviews: "Like the band, but give me a break. Just play the music and stop with the social commentary. If you feel like you are on the edge then give it to me in the music not in some bullshit interview."

'Just play the music'... imagining Godspeed as a Vegas show band...

this is nice. no bullshit, just straight on srs droney music.

it's always the same with this band. first time you listen to a wagnerian track like mladic (btw that's the serbian general responsible for the massacre of srebrenica) you think it is the greatest thing on earth, afterwards you feel empty and when you listen again it just feels like a big fart. totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch. the word DUD was invented for this kind of music. it destroys itself by repeated listening.

Indeed. Emptiest music I've ever heard. Hilarious, given all of the pseudo-radical political intent of the people involved.

it just feels like a big fart

interesting criticism

it's been 10+ years and they still haven't figured out a way to play non-vegas like places.

21-year old me agrees with alex 100%. present day attitude has shifted. I agree that it is fundamentally totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch but so is Wagner, and somewhat like Wagner (or at least stuff that's considered Wagnerian), it isn't meant for repeated listening. Godspeed is best heard as a statement of contrast. i.e. when you put them on once in a while, or when it's overheard

you people are crazy. godspeed is music to live in and by.

Encountering Swans this year has made me shrug at Godspeed.

I like both.

21-year old me agrees with alex 100%. present day attitude has shifted. I agree that it is fundamentally totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch but so is Wagner, and somewhat like Wagner (or at least stuff that's considered Wagnerian), it isn't meant for repeated listening. Godspeed is best heard as a statement of contrast. i.e. when you put them on once in a while, or when it's overheard

― sharp-looking tux for rent (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, October 20, 2012 6:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd say this fits Glenn Branca. This band is like a muzak version of Branca--incredibly loud but completely soporific via its facile predictability. It doesn't hold up even once, because you know exactly what it will sound like from the first second--which makes it pretty tiresome, given their proclivity for mistaking lengthiness with significance.

you clowns can keep reaching for ten-dollar critic words for 'bad' but i don't think you're touching on the record at all.

cranking "Mladic" at full volume while driving west towards the Texas sunset was kinda the highlight of my musical year so far. can't really "repeat" that but I'm grateful for it!

You're right, J. "Boring as fuck" is sufficient.

First track makes my top ten list for the year, probably, and is threatening to make me believe in these guys for the first time since Lift Yr.

Efrim's other band never did it for me, the one where the name changed like five billion times