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. Poignant atmospherics, noise-drenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE’S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band. Twenty-five years on, this new album is as vital, stirring, timely and implacable as any in Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s storied discography.
Just as STATE’S END summons the gamut of Godspeed’s constituent sonic trademarks, so the album artwork spans the entirety of the band’s visual history: the grainy monochromatic photography of recent releases finds its way onto the inner sleeves, while the gatefold cover art harkens back to the iconic graphics of earlier classic records like Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven. STATE’S END features illustrations by William Schmiechen, with the front cover taijitu flowers and back cover tear gas canisters rendered in raised thermographic black ink on the double-vinyl album jacket. The illuminated cross from Godspeed’s debut F#A#∞ also makes a reappearance on the inside gatefold drawing, in recurrent homage to the electrified hilltop landmark crucifix of the band’s Montréal hometown.
STATE’S END was recorded and mixed in Montréal in October 2020 at the group’s homebase studio Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango by Jace Lasek, the veteran award-winning indie producer (and co-founder of The Besnard Lakes) who works with Godspeed for the first time on this recording.The album will be released on April 2nd via Constellation Records.
Comments the band:
we wrote it on the road mostly. when that was still a place.
and then recorded it in masks later, distanced at the beginning of the second wave.
it was autumn, and the falling sun was impossibly fat and orange.
we tried to summon a brighter reckoning there,
bent beneath varied states of discomfort, worry and wonderment.we fired up the shortwave radios again, for the first time in a long time.
and found that many things had changed.
the apocalypse pastors were still there, but yelling END TIMES NOW where they once yelled “end times soon”.
and the transmission-detritus of automated militaries takes up more bandwidth now,
so that a lot of frequencies are just pulses of rising white static,
digital codexes announcing the status of various watching and killing machines.
and the ham-radio dads talk to each other all night long.
about their dying wives and what they ate for lunch and what they’ll do with their guns when antifa comes.this record is about all of us waiting for the end.
all current forms of governance are failed.
this record is about all of us waiting for the beginning,
and is informed by the following demands=
empty the prisons
take power from the police and give it to the neighbourhoods that they terrorise.
end the forever wars and all other forms of imperialism.
tax the rich until they’re impoverished.much love to all the other lost and lovely ones,
these are death-times and our side has to win.
we’ll see you on the road once the numbers fall.xoxoxox god’s pee
montreal, quebec, kanada
1 march, 2021
Tracklist:
12A
A Military Alphabet (five eyes all blind) (4521.0kHz 6730.0kHz 4109.09kHz) / Job’s Lament / First of the Last Glaciers / where we break how we shine (ROCKETS FOR MARY)
[20:22]
10A
Fire at Static Valley
[5:58]
12B
“GOVERNMENT CAME” (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 kHz) / Cliffs Gaze / cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE
[19:48]
10B
OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)
[6:30]
Recorded and mixed by Jace Lasek.
Tracked live at thee mighty Hotel2Tango, 6-11 octobre 2020.
In other news, Constellation label has also launched a Bandcamp subscription – their first and only.
Please consider supporting label-affiliated artists by subscribing. There’s a lot of great music coming from the label this year. Subscription gives you all of it, along with subscriber exclusives, and 25% off all vinyl and CDs in our 24-year catalogue of 150+ albums. They just added over 40 physical albums to Bandcamp for the first time, including classic albums from Thee Silver Mt Zion, Do Make Say Think, Vic Chesnutt and many gems (especially from our earlier years) like Hrsta, Polmo Polpo, Hangedup, Elfin Saddle, Feu Thérèse and Clues. Check out our subscription page for more info. THANK YOU! Team CST
