Godspeed You! Black Emperor — G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! — April 2, 2021

we wrote it on the road mostly. when that was still a place.
and then recorded it in masks later, distanced at the beginning of the second wave.
it was autumn, and the falling sun was impossibly fat and orange.
we tried to summon a brighter reckoning there,
bent beneath varied states of discomfort, worry and wonderment.

we fired up the shortwave radios again, for the first time in a long time.
and found that many things had changed.
the apocalypse pastors were still there, but yelling END TIMES NOW where they once yelled "end times soon".
and the transmission-detritus of automated militaries takes up more bandwidth now,
so that a lot of frequencies are just pulses of rising white static,
digital codexes announcing the status of various watching and killing machines.
and the ham-radio dads talk to each other all night long.
about their dying wives and what they ate for lunch and what they'll do with their guns when antifa comes.

this record is about all of us waiting for the end.
all current forms of governance are failed.
this record is about all of us waiting for the beginning,
and is informed by the following demands=
empty the prisons
take power from the police and give it to the neighbourhoods that they terrorise.
end the forever wars and all other forms of imperialism.
tax the rich until they're impoverished.

much love to all the other lost and lovely ones,
these are death-times and our side has to win.
we'll see you on the road once the numbers fall. 

https://localrecordstores.com/releases/gds-pee

https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/

will check it out for sure, but really haven't been able to get into anything by them in a long time. pretty sure there was a thread on them in the music forum, so won't get too much into bashing mode here.

that title is pretty fedora ngl

should've gone with "in the land of no hats, the man with a fedora is king, and keeps god's pee out of his eyes"

  On 3/4/2021 at 7:42 PM, Cryptowen said:

that title is pretty fedora ngl

The whole write up and track titles and everything is...

12" A  [20:22]
A Military Alphabet (five eyes all blind) (4521.0kHz 6730.0kHz 4109.09kHz) / Job’s Lament / First of the Last Glaciers / where we break how we shine (ROCKETS FOR MARY)

12" B  [19:48]
“GOVERNMENT CAME” (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 kHz) / Cliffs Gaze / cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE

10" A  [5:58]
Fire at Static Valley

10" B  [6:30]
OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)

I dismissed the post-reunion albums until recently. Some nice stuff.

  On 3/4/2021 at 8:47 PM, jules said:

The whole write up and track titles and everything is...

yeah that was my feeling. didn't want to harp on it because i don't really listen to godspeed even though i live in montreal (the first track off their first album is the only thing i've heard). but all the text just feels so We're a serious Indie band & it's 2011

i haven't listened to their last two records much, but i'm still excited about this news. i got to see them at a festival a few years back and it was (is) my #1 live music experience.

hoping this one is a return to form. while i didn't hate their last record, it is by far my least revisited gy!be effort.

the other two post-hiatus records are solid though, esp ADBA.

lol. this has been exactly their aesthetic since the beginning. are people really expecting cyberbladerunnerpunk 3049 now?

  On 3/5/2021 at 8:23 PM, oh2 said:

lol. this has been exactly their aesthetic since the beginning. are people really expecting cyberbladerunnerpunk 3049 now?

Not at all, but they are laying it on a little thick with this one.

Either way, their last couple have been really good and I am certainly excited for this.

I'm glad the reunion is continuing and that Godspeed are settling down into being a regular band. The last album while overall a bit less intense than usual had an excellent last movement, on par with their best stuff.

I think the circumstances of the recording/current world events will add a very on-brand portentous vibe to things. They might as well have called it We Told You Capitalism Was Fucked .

  On 3/7/2021 at 1:56 PM, Key said:

We Told You Capitalism Was Fucked

... but no one was listening because we plastered our message with the same 30 minute loud soft loud orchestral drone over and over again.

SATURDAY, MARCH 27TH, 2021

someone archived the live stream:

honestly liking this a lot more than i'd anticipated. i know it's early days, but i think it may be my favourite post-hiatus record.

i love that pathetic high-pitched whining violin sound, i'm not sure how to describe it, it sounds almost irradiated. it's in a lot of Yanqui U.X.O. and i'm hearing it a lot on this album too (on second song i believe). that texture gets across a deeply melancholic, slightly paranoid feeling very effectively. never gets old.

i didn't latch onto the last couple GYBE albums but i'm really digging this so far.

the harmonies are heavenly.

Yea, I may be a little biased as I absolutely love all of the post-hiatus stuff. LT is the only thing in their whole catalog that I am meh about.  But I think this one is a return to form and is absolutely on par with all of their stuff. Having the visuals on first go certainly helped. I like the production on this as well. At first, it did seem a little clean, but I dig how much the bass stands out and the snares cut through a few times rather nicely. The ending is absolutely brilliant as well. Looking forward]rd to it arriving for sure.

album = CUM

  On 4/5/2021 at 10:09 PM, cyanobacteria said:

album = CUM

it's very white & it makes you feel tired after you're done with it

  On 4/5/2021 at 10:46 PM, Cryptowen said:

it's very white & it makes you feel tired after you're done with it

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nah but for real i don't mean to keep coming in here just to clown on godspeed, i'm sure this album is pure creamy goodness

 

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it's a visual album, it invokes tears and sobs, it takes you to dusk in the blue hills or virginia or some shit sitting with your dog on the porch in the rain while you listen to gunshots of hunters off in the distance and all other sorts of wankery

I don't really like it to be perfectly honest. There's much better stuff in their back catalogue.

Great album 

Maybe the second best post-reformation album after Allelujah, but still not approaching the highs of the early material.

It's hard for a band to develop when they arrive so conceptually fully formed. I just wish they would shake up the ingredients a little. More collage, diverse instrumentation, structures, etc? Something. I was wondering if the occasional blandness is a mixing issue or arrangement issue? 

Last track is very nice, though.

  On 4/6/2021 at 11:03 AM, gnarlybog said:

Maybe the second best post-reformation album after Allelujah, but still not approaching the highs of the early material.

It's hard for a band to develop when they arrive so conceptually fully formed. I just wish they would shake up the ingredients a little. More collage, diverse instrumentation, structures, etc? Something. I was wondering if the occasional blandness is a mixing issue or arrangement issue? 

Last track is very nice, though.

They lost me at Yanqui for precisely that reason re: ditching the collage aspect and electronics. It just kinda became insufferably po-faced from then on.