Non-Movie Soundtrack Strategies
Godspeed You! Black Emperor leader Efrim Menuck pretty much nailed down his whole musical aesthetic when, on the debut album by his side project A Silver Mt. Zion (2000's He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms...), he entitled a song "Movie (Never Made)."
The endearing, defining element of post-rock is the way that its epic instrumental grandeur serves as a pseudo-soundtrack. Made not to accompany visuals, but to inspire them, these soundtracks allow listeners the wonders of individual interpretation, allow those eyes-closed-in-headphones to summon all manner of visions via the sounds they're hearing.
And no one hits these cinematic-in-spirit-only heights quite like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the nine-man Canadian collective who, back in their early days, were known as the more grammatically correct Godspeed You Black Emperor! (note exclamation mark), but who we can happily call Godspeed!
The size of the band offers them scope to evoke a range of sounds; to inspire a range of visions. Though they owe an obvious debt to minimalist composers like Steve Reich, and the tape collages of musique concrète, Godspeed! are punk-rockers, at heart, and when their many members —violin, cello, two drummers, two percussionists, three guitarists— plug in and crank it up, they can reach volume so loud that it sucks the air out of the room, vibrates your teeth, and punches out a hollowed emptiness in your guts.
More is Less
Where 1999's Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP was heavy on the clamorous crescendos, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's second LP, 2000's Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, was much more a study in dynamic range. Of course, at a sprawling 87 minutes long, this double album provided the band with the room to stretch out.
Compositions are uniformly long and flowing, of course, but the overall length also allows Godspeed! a greater array of moments in which they can reduce things to bare whispers of sound. Comforted by the generous sprawl, you can feel the band teasing out every idea. The need to leap from peak to peak is lessened, meaning there's greater chasms of near-silence there to contrast/counterbalance the more furious moments.
In between Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada and 2002's Yanqui U.X.O., this LP comes across as more measured; the white-hot, politicized rage that powers their other records absent in favor of a languorous melancholy, an aching sadness that lingers in every dewy note of frayed guitar, every ghostly field recording, every weeping wail of violin.
The Architecture of Unhappiness
These tears that are shed, as throughout the Godspeed! canon, are shed for urban decay, for cities once thrumming with human life grown desolate; white flight leaving city centers resembling ghost towns, the suburban sprawl an essentially empty void of eerie shopping malls in which human characteristics are absent.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor are, in many ways, a form of architectural psychology; an artistic exploration of the way sound moves through space. Their grand, tidal shifts of sound come like waves; and just as sea-water explores every crevice of shore and rock, so too do the band's stringed instruments tease out every alley, every crack, every drain, every broken pane of their painful musical metropolises.
Well, at least that's how this movie (never made) plays in my mind.
Record Label: Constellation
Release Date: October 9, 2000
