Godspeed

The instrumental, multimedia Montreal group Godspeed You! Black Emperor creates extended, repetition-oriented chamber rock. The minimal and patient builds-to-crescendo of the group's compositions results in a meditative and hypnotic listen that becomes almost narrative when combined with found-sound splices and the films of their visual collaborators. Collection includes: 'F#A#∞' (1998); 'Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada E.P.' (1999); 'Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven!' (2000) 2CD; 'Yanqui U.X.O.' (2002); 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!' (2012); 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' (2015).

With Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the question is easy: Where do you even begin? For nearly a quarter century the shifting, roughly nine-member Canadian collective has been releasing swelling, torrential compositions that also gracefully loom, like a dewed spiderweb, squaring the circle of neo-classical and punk rock. It is demanding, complex, wordless music, directed in part at the off-switch of the information age. Godspeed — a project that, remarkably, exists completely on its own financial and creative terms — expects an interpretive exchange from its listeners, and rewards surrender to the transaction. This is music that's not a map but an unreliable compass, precise in its dissonance and generous with its emotions.

The inimitable GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times. As the heretical anarcho-punk spirit of the title implies, Godspeed harnesses some particularly raw power, spittle and grit across two riveting 20-minute side-length trajectories of noise-drenched widescreen post-rock: inexorable chug blossoms into blown-out twang, as some of the band’s most soaring, searing melodies ricochet and converge amidst violin and bassline counterpoint. Field recordings and roiling semi-improvised passages frame these fervent epics, and two shorter self-contained 6-minute pieces find the band at its most devastatingly beautiful, haunting and elegiac.

No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead (stylized in all caps and with quotation marks) is the eighth studio album by Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, released on 4 October 2024 by Constellation Records.

New 2014 studio album from the band which now features the talents of Nick Beggs, bass / stick player from the Steve Hackett and Steven Wilson bands!‘Godspeed’ is the third release by the band that was formed in 2009 when Belgian producer and Synth musician Frank Van Bogaert and keyboard player William Beckers established FISH ON FRIDAY as a studio-based Progressive Rock project. The band’s debut album – ‘Shoot The Moon’ was released in 2010 and saw the band augmented by Californian guitarist Marty Townsend and drummer Marcus Weymaere. All in all ‘Godspeed’ is a Progressive Rock album of fine songs and excellent musicianship that should appeal instantly to fans of most of the more song-based Progressive Rock bands around in the 70’s and 80’s.

No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead (stylized in all caps and with quotation marks) is the eighth studio album by Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, released on 4 October 2024 by Constellation Records.