godspeed you! black emperor: album/ep poll

this poll deserves its place among the pantheon

they said it all with the first album, shoulda quit there

slow riot

If any jackass wants to complain about the lack of a 'All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling' option, or the placement of the exclamation mark, then go right ahead.

You will be on the receiving end of my d-lock.

noones ever heard it, chances are it doesn't exist

also the results of this poll will be hideously rong

What's your choice?

My personal vote is for 'Slow Riot', I always say, with only the most minimal of hyperbole, that it changed my life.

yanqui uxo is the best thing these guys did by a gazillion light imo

*years

no

i heard slow riot first and i was pretty done after that.

voted for f♯a♯∞

lj it's good but not the best.

yanqui uxo is the best thing these guys did by a gazillion light imo

wau

rong

Has to be f♯a♯∞. It provided the template both musically and visually. And that intro has become legendary.

Haven't listened to Godspeed in a long time, and I rather tired of their formula by the time Yanqui came out. But they had their moments.

i think i would put yanqui in the top 5 TBF

so in that way we agree, LJ

someone needs to get my back, like, now

i'm going for skinny fists, but even back in 2000 i felt i was somehow missing something with this band.

yeah from what i remember yanqui uxo didn't have any awful fucking monologues, a plus, but it was also long and tedious. i remember f♯a♯∞ being murkier and shorter, and the one voiceover on it was ... bad but.. well bad. these guys kind of sucked didn't they

xx-posts

i liked yuxo a lot more than the TERRIBLE lift your asses up and poop into my mouth double cd thing

there are some beautiful moments on 'yanqui' but at least half of it is like "wow let's watch this climax slowly and predictably build for 20 minutes" which were straight-up boring compared to their best moments on say f#A#oo or skinny fists

for me it's either of those (f#A#oo or skinny fists)

also more than slow riot for stfu

x-post

ha but slow riot has the most of that one crazy street-prophet dude right? "america's third world country, third world third-rate third class slum"

slo riot

take it easy

godspeed gets a bad rap, tho it's not totally deserved. someone said it on another thread (the 'critically lauded 10 years ago' thread maybe??) that they're not all that different from SWANS in a lot of respects. just listen to them play over that crazy dude's monologues on 'slow riot' and it sounds exactly like something from 'soundtracks for the blind'

gira's mentioned something like that himself

yeah i'm "comically" overreacting i guess. i'd probably like most of these if i listened to them again but *shrug* don't care enough

slow riot because it does what they do well, and gets in and out in under 30 mins.

but my preference is colored by nostalgia. it was the first thing i heard by them, and when it came out i was living by myself, post-divorce, in a sort of shack in the woods. i would put it on and lie on the floor and watch the fire in my wood stove. by the time skinny fists came out i was pretty well done with that phase.

tipsy mothra are you the unabomber

they said it all with the first last album, shoulda quit started there

Fixed, thanks for playing!

yanqui uxo is the best thing these guys did by a gazillion light imo

Agreed...

They were amazing live when I saw them.

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides and a dark wind blows. The government is corrupt, and we're on so many drugs with the radio on and the curtains drawn. We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death. And when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No." I open up my wallet and it's full of blood

^awful

tipsy mothra are you the unabomber

my friends said my place looked like the evil dead house. it was a big symbolic gesture, getting away from my old life, etc. no wonder i was vulnerable to godspeed.

OK, Yanqui UXO and why it rules compared to their previous albums:

-Sustained momentum
-Melodically and structurally denser
-Genuine understanding of repetition and how subtle modulations can wreak emotional chaos
-Better songwriting, viz. the ambient bits do not jar with the loud bits, they progress from and into them (see: sustained momentum)
-Bigger sound...they nailed feedback and cavernous guitar clang here better than ever before, when it had been for the most part ever-so-slightly-corny post-rock screwdrivering...Albini was at his very finest here
-Motherfucker = Redeemer Part 2 is one of the finest things I've ever heard in the medium of, hell, rock music...it's progressive, spiralling, unpredictable, gripping, and ultimately speechlessly beautiful
-Motherfucker = Redeemer Part 1 shows incredible nuance and depth in its second half...again, gorgeously produced
-Hell, RFORF is wonderfully stage-managed...it may have a more drawn-out build than previous GYBE but it's no more predictable, and indeed it has WAY more surprises than given credit for...it's all about the journey, not the destination (and when you reach the destination, it pulls back almost immediately again into mournful wonder)
-09-15-00 is a little more trite and straightforward than the others, but manages, largely by dint of its massy, both-up-front-AND-lurking-beneath sound, and again SUPERB use of subtly-altering repetition to be thoroughly likeable. Even Part 2. It's like a superior, more considered, more mature version of East Hastings (right down to the weird lengthy ambient outro)...also the last two minutes of Part 1 feature some quite, quite beautiful, keening, elegiac instrumentation that has pretty much burned itself onto my mind (like so many of this record's quirks)...the way guitars take over from strings and vice versa...elements taking over from each other, swapping blows, is a constant feature (especially in M=R2) which leads me to:
-This is an album of dichotomies, like so much 'post-rock' (hate that term) but the narrative defining them is labyrinthine, intense, and ultimately rewarding
-The previous records, good as they were, I just find to be bitty and unsatisfying for the most part. "The Dead Flag Blues" was by a considerable margin the best track these guys managed until they released this album...hell, even "Sleep" sounds a bit off these days
-Yanqui UXO is a definitive, meaty statement of doomy intent and it NEVER takes its eye off the ball

the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel - a good thing surely?

If I was going to play one now, it would probably be Skinny Fists, 'cos y'know, the first 'bit' is great, and there's that other great that comes about 2 hours later when they suddenly wake up and start playing again, but really about halfway through the first side I'd probably think I should've played either f♯a♯∞ or kanada. Hardly listened to Yanqui after I got it. I'll come back to this one.

OK, Yanqui UXO and why it does not rule compared to their previous albums:

-It is crap

lol

country matters i'll give it a listen again soon

if you count slow riot as an ep then skinny fists is probably the best album just ahead of the first.

Lord help us if I'd put the LP & CD versions of f♯a♯∞ as separate options, we'd be here all week... ;-)

The best bit of "Lift" lasts from about the midpoint of the final track until the end imo

...granted that the bit ten minutes into "Storm" is vv pretty btw

there's 2 different vinyl versions isn't there?

I've only heard the first two. I love Slow Riot to bits, so I voted for it.

It seemed with GY!BE that for a short period everyone loved them, then suddenly everyone hated them. Were the hataz right?

no

no, the hataz weren't right. but there's something so agonizingly self-indulgent, self-serious, melodramatic about this band that makes it hard for me to listen to them anymore, even though i think they're pretty good records - and i admit that this has more to do w/ their off-album personalities, well, mostly that efrim dude

plus the last few silver mt. zion albums have been pretty shitty

i've only ever heard the newest SMZ album and liked it well enough. i actually saw them and it was interesting how totally different they present themselves from godspeed--really funny and chill onstage, obviously just out to have some fun playing loud music.

yea, i guess i can't totally hang w/ efrim's voice, and i wasn't totally digging the choir stuff. the first two SMZ albums i think are pretty cool though

When I first heard GY!BE, I thought they were the coolest thing ever.

By the third time I played f♯a♯∞, I never wanted to hear them again.

With A Silver Mt. Zion, I liked the first record, apart from the one with the singing on it. Then I heard their subsequent albums were full of singing. Run away!

I remember seeing ASMZ a few years ago at the Scala in London and they were at once boring and great in small alternating chunks, I was quite shocked when Efrim started on about Bush and Blair between songs and got tripped up by negative vibes from the audience, instead of dealing with it he dug himself a bigger hole and it ended up with people shouting stuff along the lines of 'justplaysomefuckingmusicyoujunkiehippiewankers' it was dead odd.

This is a whole lot of projecting but I feel like there are a quite a lot of ppl on (places like) ILM for whom that album had a certain entry point factor - you can say a bunch of it was half baked and it prolly was but it was really not much like anything I'd heard aged 18. Combine that with the fact that they were pretty active (recording and touring) for only a fairly short amount of time and that maybe explains why a lot of people are more nostalgic about them than actively praiseworthy (which is why - re something LJ said up there a bit - 'Moya' is always gonna sound pretty immense to me even if it *is* an elementary scale exercise or whatevs - it sounds like being 19 and not jaded)

Same here, pretty much. It was more or less:

F# A# oo: "Wow, this is thrilling and new!"
Slow Riot: "Wow, this is a step up!"
Skinny Fists: "Wow, my new favourite band have made an amazing double album!"
UXO: "This is still pretty good!"

I think I'd have to pick the EP, 'Moya' is possibly their best song and 'BBF3' has the most effective use of dialogue of anything they recorded.

i think the newest ASMZ is the only listenable thing they've ever done. think i might prefer it to any of the GYBE stuff actually

F# A# oo: "Wow, this is thrilling and new!"
Slow Riot: "Wow, this is a step up!"
Skinny Fists: "Wow, my new favourite band have made an amazing double album!"
UXO: "This is still pretty good!"

OTM!

rereading how my comment up there and realizing how negative it sounds, i should probably clarify that i really like the GYBE stuff, i am just completely shocked by how good the most recent ASMZ ended up being because i cant stomach the older stuff really.

If I could, I would vote for the the extended postapocalyptic empty-London scene in 28 Days Later, as that seemed to be the ideal practical application for GYBE.

As it stands, I'll go for Slow Riot b/c of the track with the ultraparanoid militia dude.

If I could, I would vote for the the extended postapocalyptic empty-London scene in 28 Days Later

It's on f♯a♯∞ so you could vote for that.

that seemed to be the ideal practical application for GYBE.

I'd agree if it wasn't for the really clumsy edit halfway through.

i vote skinny fists antennas

just cuz that's the one i've listened to the most

this band is pretty awesome IMO.

am completely not understanding the Slow Riot voters...like, it doesn't even remotely figure in my brain how it COULD be their best record, unless y'guys simply can't stomach records that are longer than 30 minutes

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Get voting people. One day left.

Yanqui it is and shall always be.

otm

Am becoming rapidly convinced that the Slow Riot voters haven't heard any of the other records in one sitting :-P

hahah is that our fault or the other records' fault?

BLAME THE VICTIM

Still voting Slow Riot - I will not be browbeaten!

Ha, well if you collected the best bits of the first two albums and the EP (so, all of The Dead Flag Blues, and NONE of the EP) then you'd have something almost worthy of challenging Yanqui

like uh

1) TDFB
2) last few minutes of East Hastings (the bit about the large barge)
3) minutes 7 through 12 of Storm
4) minute 18 through to the end of Sleep
5) Antennas To Heaven (entirety)

hence, epic opener and closer, both with intriguing and enchanting internal narratives, and about 15 minutes of really good music in between, maybe more with decent segues

yanqui is the weakest

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

butthurt lj in

5

4

3

2

1

I am happy with these results

1st 3 all pretty close!

pfft

yanqui way behind

LOUIS HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE WRONG?!

so so right

yea this results are good. yanqui's totally the weakest

its not a bad album, just the weakest.

lol sorry haterz

Very close, but the best man won.

lj broke ilx because of these results?

LOL!

kinda surprised that 90 people voted in this

Louis still right.

kinda surprised that 90 people voted in this

― call all destroyer, Friday, April 10, 2009 4:55 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I hear ya but, like, 90 ilxors who would call themselves GYBE fans - probably unlikely; 90 ilxors who liked them enough at some point to have a fave album - no surprise at all really

don't say I never did nothin' for ya etc

gybe live 1999
http://www.sendspace.com/file/za3ftk

thanks dude!

I just listened to Yanqui U.X.O. for the first time in forever and really enjoyed it. Maybe I've popped a few too many brewskies, but when the long tremelo march of doom that takes up most of the second half of "Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls" finally burst into the finale, and I simultaneously glanced up at the television to see the hilariously awesome 1976 version of King Kong right at the moment where Kong battles a giant snake as Jeff Bridges embraces Jessica Lange in a showcase of her sideboobs - well, let's just say it say it was one of the best moments of 2009.

this thread will be a long and triumphant string of sheepish former YUXO haters (or disregarders) crawling into the fold as that album's stature increases over time

It really is their best album.

Close! Wanted to start this poll but it turned out OK.