GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR!
f#a#00 -&- Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada
by James Russell

Perhaps I shouldn't be writing this review. Normally if I set out to write about something, I don't do it until I actually know something about the subject. In this case, I'm now going to review two records by the Canadian band Godspeed You Black Emperor!, in a situation where their music is pretty much all I know about them. The two records are called f#a#00 (that "00" should actually be an infinity sign, but the double-0 was the nearest I could approximate on my word processor) and Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada. The band come from Montreal in Canada. There's about nine of them. And they have one of the best band names I ever heard. Which is pretty much the sum of my knowledge about the band.

f#a#00 is the band's first disc, released in 1998… although I've read another review of the album somewhere on the Internet which seemed to say that the album had actually been released sometime earlier, and that the re-release (if that's what it is) had some extra material not on the original issue. I don't know what the case is myself, and the somewhat obscure booklet notes don't enlighten me much either. The most I can gather from them is that the album was recorded at various points between 1995 and 1998. So let's leave that question for a later date because I don't know the answer right at the moment.

At any rate, one undeniable thing is that f#a#00 is a full length album, running some 63-odd minutes. Somewhat amazingly (or alarmingly), it has only three tracks in all that time ("The Dead Flag Blues", 16½ minutes; "East Hastings", 18 minutes; "Providence", 29 minutes). That said, each one is made up of a number of reasonably clearly demarcated smaller parts rather than being a single continuous piece of music (in the booklet, each subsection is given its own title as well); if you don't look at the track indicator on your player while listening to it, you'll think it's an album with a more conventional 11 or 12 tracks. There is, of course, a hidden track at the end of the disc-people seem unable to resist those with CDs-although, given the modular construction of the album, you could perhaps argue if you really wanted to that the customary five minutes silence before the last track is part of the overall structure.

The sound of this album, the actual physical sound of it, is quite intriguing. If we're to believe the booklet notes, the album was made using a recording console from 1933, which may or may not explain it. It's got a very wide open, light and air acoustic, with a colour you might describe as a somewhat burnished grey to match the black and white photographs and illustrations in the booklet. Describing the music is slightly more difficult. It's primarily instrumental, ranging from slow and soft to reasonably fast and louder, with some snatches of dialogue and other vocals from unidentified sources; the instrumentation being (so far as I can tell) guitars, bass, drums, string quartet, plus occasional glockenspiel and trumpet; some 21 members of the band from 1995-98 are credited, though not with the instruments that each plays. If the term "post-rock" means anything, you might be able to describe GYBE! as being that.

Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada announces itself as an EP, containing two tracks across some 28 minutes, played by the settled nine-piece band. (You may have guessed by now that this is not conventional radio fare). Track one, "Moya", starts with the strings alone before the more usual rock instruments kick in, finally building to a gracefully swinging conclusion. This track is probably the most immediately accessible thing they've done (also their shortest track so far at 11 minutes). It flows right into the second track, the 18-minute "BBF3", which alternates between band passages and a recording of a rant by a very worrisome-sounding man recorded on a sidewalk in Providence. All up this material flows more seamlessly than the stuff on the album.

The EP is possibly a better place for newcomers to begin than the album, being shorter and easier to handle, but of course you should go with both. GYBE! perhaps require a bit of listener effort, it's not exactly easy-listening, though it has a beauty of its own and is worth getting to know. That's assuming you can get a hold of either disc, since both are only on import. Ask around at your record shop (they're on Constellation Records in Canada and Kranky in the US) and see if they can get a hold of them, or look for them on the Internet. Either way, be prepared to possibly pay a fair bit. If what I've described sounds interesting, however, give it a go, and get into the sounds of-to quote the booklet notes-"open road, telegraph poles, a sun that is always falling, and a tangled up melody falling down slowly…"

Written: 19 January 2000