godspeed you! black emperor - Yanqui U.x.O.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Yanqui U.x.O. [Constellation, 2002]
[Constellation, 2003]

For those of you who don’t have access to music channels outside of corporate interests, I introduce you to one of Canada’s most important and innovative ensembles. For those who have been following Godspeed and related side projects since 1997's monumental F#A#∞ LP, well it’s just another year isn’t it? And yet with this release a more overt political message is added to the usual apocalyptic anxieties for which the band have become known. The title of this disc refers to the barbaric artefacts of the military-industrial complex – landmines and other unexploded ordinance – which sublimely graces the life of many a poor non-western farmer. Marcel Duchamp’s famous Mona Lisa meets the paranoid-psychotics of previous Godspeed records: Yanqui you asshole, you’ll end us all.

The music is itself less atmospheric this time, although the famous Godspeed quiet-loud orgiastic zenith is apparent in several sections of the 3 pieces provided on this disc. Ethereal passages of string and guitar texture allow deep contemplation, subsequently to crescendo to heights of mechanistic grandeur wherein the listener is happily crushed beneath the Juggernaut of rhythmic bombast. If you have any aesthetic sense you will be amazed by what can still be accomplished in the wasteland of the post-rock idiom (yes Timmy, rock has been dead a long time). Those interested in more avant-guard explorations, however, might be disappointed with Godspeed’s reiteration of their previous compositional styles.

Some die-hard Godspeed fans might also frown at Steve Albini, who recorded the album, as there is an obvious avoidance of the recording process itself as compositional element – Godspeed themselves might have felt the same when they completely remixed the record without his involvement.

Certainly not the most innovative recording of the year – I’ll leave that to the MEGO crew, among others – nevertheless Yanqui U.x.O. is one of the more interesting releases you will find in 2002.

MP3: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 09-15-00 (part one)