Godspeed You! Black Emperor are more than likely going to discontinue the project: happy or sad?

Myself, I don't. It got old a long time ago.

Of course, that new song isn't a very good indication of anything getting better...

Which tune of theirs was used in 28 Days Later? It worked really well, I thought.

On the other hand, their behavior in interviews, etc. has done nothing to dispel the image of the Black Bloc anti-global crowd as a bunch of self-important sourpusses.

I do get the impression with them that when they move away from things of epic scope and grandeur they fall on their face a bit, and end up with rambling dreck like 1-Speed Bike and Re: and so forth. Hanged Up's last thing was better than I expected, mind.

Imagine my surprise, therefore (and no, this isn't going to turn into a letter in Razzle...) when the full 45 minutes passed before gybe deigned to take the stage, and even then just to start tuning up. Having done so, they then left the stage again and entered singly, trying to get individual applause. Despite all this, the sound sucked during the first song (Gathering Storm), and when it didn't get any better during the next one (Song For Wanda, or whatever it ended up being called) I went up stairs to see Wire instead. Who made me wish I'd seen all of them rather than watch blatant ego-stroking by people who always claimed to be above it. And then I just felt even worse when I realised I'd missed Rachel's before Wire as well.

(the true dreck on Constellation: Sofa. Lud, they're useless.)

I get the feeling I've made this post before.

Two songs? I thought they were just part 1 and part 2 of that one song: 'The Boring One'?

yer confusing them with Sigur Ros.

I liked a great deal that came from the GY!BE camp (especially the first -- Mark OTM), but I know other good stuff will follow, whether the name exists or not. That's the great thing about collectives.

For me, f#... and Slow Riot... are the only gy!be releases I might ever conceive of listening to. There are some bootlegs of the songs that end up on ...Skinny Fists... that make you wonder quite how they got the album so completely wrong.

You've got me contemplating a S/D thread now...

That's my piece.

In the version it ended up in it just never gets to the point - something you couldn't accuse them of performing those songs live at the time.

And what exactly is the point of 'Moya Sings "Baby-O"'?

They're splitting over Iraq

http://www.nme.com/news/godspeed-you-black-emperor/34219

hope they land safely

"People didn't need a rock band pointing in the direction of (how the world was at that point). Maybe what they needed is some clumsy words, a presentation that was a little more human."

I imagine this being said through a crackle of static while a slow and mournful violin part begins.

I want to have an existential freakout.

xpost ...then a slowly emerging crescendo that culminates in 2 1/2 minutes of triumphalism.

Still, I always thought Godspeed got a bad rap. If you take only Slow Riot and F#A#oo, and the loads of copycat bands they spawned, and ignore the name changing, pretense, and the albums that came after, they were pretty successful. If they would have named themselves something unassuming like Canadian Rhythms and left the politics out of it, I doubt they'd have a hundreth of the haters.

The fourth google result for "po-faced cunts" is about GYBE.

something unassuming like Canadian Rhythms

...that's a lateral move.

lol canadian rhythms.

Ottawa Grooves

Moose Jaw Breaks

I guess I'm not surprised. I figured they'd more or less gone on hiatus until Bush was out of office as some kind of protest.

I disagree with ZS's recommendation(?) that people ignore "Lift Yr. Skinny Fists..." and "Yanqui UXO," though... They're both great records. "Yanqui UXO" really seemed like kind of a step down at the time, but I find that it's the one that I listen to most often now.

At any rate, it's a shame we'll never hear properly recorded versions of songs like "Albanian" and "Gamelan."

On the other hand, their behavior in interviews, etc. has done nothing to dispel the image of the Black Bloc anti-global crowd as a bunch of self-important sourpusses.

-- spittle (spittle), Thursday, December 4, 2003 2:02 AM (4 years ago)

Ugh, no doubt about that, though.

Remember when NME put them on the cover, even though they'd only sold a couple of thousand records here?

I thought they were trying to bankrupt their own magazine to get redundancy packages from IPC or something.

There's still a chance of a posthumous album... right... right...?

I, for one, am sad.

Though really I'm glad, as it leaves their legacy, in my eyes, damn-near perfect, with no chance to sully it with a lacklustre much-delayed substandard return.

I like their music, but I wish I didn't know anything else about them (even though I may agree with some of their politics)

r.i.p. I still need Slow Riot for Zero Kanada tho (or whatever it's called).

As much as I love them, 'existential freakout' sounds way to 17 year old pot-head-esque.

The guitar on Yanqui is way stronger than the earlier stuff. The phaser and hammered delay WOW

fuck steve albini with a hammer

This is possibly the lamest break-up in recent memory. It's as if I didn't bother to mow the lawn for five years, and then told everybody that I would never mow it ever again because plastic Hefty bags are bad for the environment.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/48600-godspeed-still-on-hiatus-not-completely-broken-up

He actually wrote directly to DiS about it:

"the internet remains a refuge for lazy writing and diminishing conclusions- the statements attributed to me in this 'news piece'
have been pulled out of their original context,
and pasted benath a misleading headline,
in the name of scoring some sort of bullshit 'news exclusive'.
godspeed's interminable silence will continue into the foreseeable future,
but it wasn't the iraq war that made it impossible for us to continue functioning as an active band-
a whole host of internal disagreements and external pressures contributed to us ending our long march together.
there were 9 of us in the band,
and i expect that if you asked each member to summarize the factors that led to our current hiatus,
you would get 9 different answers.
the truth is almost always both complicated and boring,
and can't be articulated via bullet points and pull-quotes,
especially in the hands of charlatans only interested in increasing their banner-ad rates by juicing their page-hit totals..."

yrs.,
efrim

Twat.

Is he wrong?

I dunno, but that's one monster haiku!

Why "Twat" aldo?

Godspeed You! Black Emperor working on new album

!!!

Godspeed is scheduled to have a meeting about this

phew rock and roll

But how will the punctuation sit?

Not unexpected, but great news nonetheless.

Just to link to the slightly more active godspeed thread... Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Classic or Dud?

Thanks Krakow

Thank you for the news! I'd been very much hoping that the re-convening of the band last year would lead to new recordings, so it's great to hear that this could well be the case.

I just wanted to link the threads up, as that one had been the site of some more recent discussions.

Yeah I picked the wrong one out of a search, so thanks! Really excited about it.

can we start a kickstarter to get them to actually split up

here i pledge five bucks (actually five pounds)