Godspeed You Black Emperor — Lift yr. Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven

There is an interesting analogy that can be made between a GYBE song and when you played Lego(tm) as a kid: most of the fun was building things up and creating a new reality, leaving this earth for a dreamworld shaped by yourself, a realistic or totally alien landscape right out of your imagination... Or as Motorhead would put it, "The Chase is Better than the Catch" and the actual journey is more enjoyable than getting there. That's what a GYBE song is about; going places!

The music is always moving from one place to the other and it's in no hurry to wrap things up, it takes the time to build up enough so that when the crescendo climaxes it really brings closure to the tension that was created and gives us, the listeners, some of the best music heard in ages!

Many people have said that this is "a soundtrack to the end of the world", I tend to agree since some parts of that record are so bleak (yet beautiful) that it makes me feel in the mouth of the graveyard, about to be swallowed up by the unevitable chaos that has yet to come (pretty pretentious description, uh? But don't blame the band for it, that part was by me) and the samples of a religious loon preaching about heaven and hell and of an old guy reminiscing old days when he got lost on Connie Island don't help to ease the fatalistic yet surreal halo this record radiates.

This nine-piece instrumental ensemble use Violin, Cello, horns, xylophone, piano, drums, clean electric guitar, various noises and feedback, dialogue samples and the music they create could be best described as instrumental "compositions" of post-rock chamber music instead of traditional "songs". The majority of the melodies are made of interwoven notes that are similar to unbreakable rubber bands stretched into infinity (this sentence is nominated for most pretentious sentence of the review - and yet it's hard to totally exclude superlatives when talking about Godspeed). What makes GYBE so good is not really on the technical level although they are very competent; you won't hear any fast scales, virtuoso playing or even instrumental solos: it's really a group effort (just like with a complete orchestra). What make them so good is more on the songwriting level and the way it connects emotionally and invoke feelings and images to the listener.

The production is nearly non-existant in the sense that it's very transparent (it's far from being a bad sounding record - don't get the wrong idea, the sound quality is fantastic and very dynamic). It sounds like the band is playing live in very adequate acoustic conditions and the instruments keep their nuances and organic feel unlike with the case of overproduced albums. In fact, I don't think anything else than this lo-fi production could've fitted this material as well.

This music is the auditive equivalent of what your eyes perceive when you watch strange and everchanging movies; from the grainy and artsy black and white 8mm to the technicolor and crystal clear picture. Of course the album is slighlty imperfect and some of the more minimalistic ambient parts (like"Deathkamp Drone") are not as interesting as the remaining of the album, but yet they deserve inclusion and fit very well in the overall ambience. I also feel I should mention the very interesting packaging which is made of recycled paper and contains many perplexing drawings, pictures and texts.

If you want to hear a totally legal 18 minutes unreleased composition that was later incorporated to "Lift yr. skinny fists like antennas to heaven", you can download this John Peel Session track from the Godspeed You Black Emperor homepage. It starts pretty mellow, but don't be discouraged by that and listen to the whole thing a few times. You'll thank me later.