h33t - Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U X O [rockbox]

Personal fav album of mine.
Wiki on the GYBE

Some info on the group.

Quote:

Montreal, Canada (1994 – present)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (formerly punctuated Godspeed You Black Emperor! and abbreviated to GY!BE, GYBE, or just Godspeed) is a Canadian rock band based in Montreal, Quebec.

Formed in 1994 in Montreal, Canada, the band has been highly influential within the post-rock genre. Working with orchestrated arrangements, the nine-piece group created tracks with wide dynamic ranges, a highly evocative use of instrumentation and sounds and uncompromising long form compositions. Their engrossing use of art and visuals in both album packaging and live performances create an enigmatic aura.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor took their name from a little known 1976 Japanese black-and-white documentary by director Mitsuo Yanagimachi, which follows the exploits of a Japanese biker gang, the Black Emperors.

They are most commonly classified as post-rock, but are just as well recognized outside any established scene and take influences from a range of styles including progressive rock, post-punk, classical music, soundtrack composition and the avant-garde. Each release usually consists of an entire piece divided into movements, mostly between 15 and 25 minutes, sometimes eponymously specified in the liner notes.

GY!BE formed around 1994 with three members and had as many as fifteen members but tended to have a core group of nine. Their instrumentation varied with the lineup but the music is mostly based around electric and bass guitars, as well as a strings and a percussion section. Other instruments such as the glockenspiel or the French horn have made occasional appearances.

Now for a review of the album in question.

Quote:

When first adopted, a philosophy of defiance and protest is enthralling. The hope and excitement of seeing through the fallacies and mistakes of your chosen enemies is addictive, inspiring and empowering. Anything is possible when you and your close circle of compatriots know the truth. But when your cries for change go unanswered and your efforts to improve are largely ignored, the thrill of rebellion recedes and your convictions begin to take a backseat to frustration. When frustration is allowed to fester, it digs a canyon between you and your principles -- deep, treacherous, bridgeless -- and creates conditions suitable for breeding cynicism.

With Yanqui U.X.O., Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor sound frustrated. And cranky and distant. It’s simple to see where their anger is coming from -- Godspeed is an anti-poverty, pacifist collective making music in a time when war is being waged on the destitute and when a discernable percentage of active bands can be rightfully accused of borrowing their trademarks -- but it’s hard to digest the sound of it. Gone are the field recordings that brought foggy, ethereal grit to the band’s epic orchestrations. Gone is the warm embrace of their previous recordings, as the sound is cold and the mix democratic to the point where no instruments are discernable as leads or back-ups. Gone are the volume shifts that marked the climax of the most crushing Godspeed compositions. There are no heights and no depths on Yanqui -- no angels ascending, no skeletons being reduced to dust -- meaning that the unexploded ordinance referred to by U.X.O. is actually more musical than it is theoretical.

What remains is a sometimes cold, sometimes confusing collection of epics that are more intricate than anything GYBE have ever created. The songs are massive, meandering and dense; the volume swells are tasteful and dramatic; the climaxes (which seem few, far between, and less than obvious) are cacophonous and swirling hazes that buzz and hover where before they would drive and destroy. Yanqui U.X.O. is a restrained and distilled Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

But the colors seem faded. The blood is gone, the mud is dried, the grass is dead. Distance is implied at every turn by the mix, by the arrangements, by the bizarre proliferation of guitar effects. Whereas Godspeed of yore induced exhausted sighs of “fuck”, the material here prompts a preface: “what the”. For every moment of rustic dreaminess there are another three that try your patience and test your loyalty to one of the planet’s finer bands. Much of “09-15-00” precariously straddles suspense and mourning, but there is never a payoff to justify either feeling, just unending tension and the odd rhythmic shift. The song’s second movement sounds like October ice, delicate, cold and unsupportive. Its succession of fading single notes is repetitive and ultimately rather empty.

“Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls” seems a more concentrated attempt at confusion. Within minutes, the track moves from prickly, mature belligerence to pounding black march to swirling fog of stabbing strings and wilting guitars, but not one of the movements is truly riveting. The song becomes mired in a sparse, low-end dirge that continues for what seems like an eternity. Odd and somewhat exasperating, when the trudge finally breaks it becomes replaced by such a melange of spaced out guitar and unassertive hints of optimism that it confuses more than it completes.

The final 30 minutes belong to “Motherfucker = Redeemer”, and if these two tracks are in fact the band’s final creation, they will be remembered fondly as some of the best music Gospeed You! Black Emperor ever spliced together. The first 21 minutes range from the album’s first energetic moments -- lively and bright, driven by an incessant kickdrum -- to cacophony to delicate, sad fog that finally implies some sort of hope or comfort. The second segment is like nothing the band has ever done. Spatters of snare and phaser-riddled guitars swing between distant strings and buried drums to create forceful, chilly post-rock. The most poignant, cohesive track on the album, the second movement of “Motherfucker = Redeemer” ends the album with certainty where the rest of the album raises nothing but questions.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor has aged, acquiring greater wisdom, grace and patience, but they are also beginning to display exhaustion, irritability and frustration; with the world, with their sound, with themselves. The “hammer of hope” looms large in the artwork of Yanqui U.X.O., but rarely does the album indicate a band willing to pick it up.

Enjoy!

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