Godspeed You! Black Emperor is an experimental rock band from Montreal that have garnered a committed fan base over the past three decades. Founded in 1994 and cryptically named after a Japanese motorcycle gang, they are seen as adherents of “post-rock,” a nebulous category that nonetheless has several defining features, including long compositions, atypical tempos, and a preference for instrumental music over lyrical content. Post-rock is not radio-friendly. Drawing from metal, prog rock, and classical music, it often imparts a cinematic quality, consisting of constructed soundscapes that envelop and transport the listener to a different time and place.
Released on October 4, the latest LP from Godspeed You! Black Emperor is entitled NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD. The name, with its faux-bureaucratic prose, is unambiguous. Akin to the date paintings of the Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara, Godspeed’s new album is meant to mark a moment in time that signals the fullness and the importance of singular days, weeks, and months — but equally their limited, ephemeral nature when faced with the relentless passing of time. The fact that, eight months later, the current estimate of Palestinians killed in Gaza numbers at least 43,800 people (as of October 31, 2024) demonstrates the swift obsolescence of such documentary gestures.
This tension between the assertion of meaning and an acknowledgment of senselessness is partly the point. Unlike their post-rock peers — Scotland’s Mogwai, Japan’s Mono, or Louisville, Kentucky’s Slint, credited with establishing the genre — Godspeed have long maintained a political stance. Their third album, Yanqui U.X.O. (2002), was written and recorded early on during the “war on…
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Auteur: Christopher J. Lee
