OUT ON THE 2ND APRIL VIA CONSTELLATION
SIXTY SECOND ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT 4K AUDIO-VISUAL CLIP
Stream G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! in full
Saturday 27 March at 6pm EST / 10pm GMT and 11pm CET
The band’s 16mm analog film projections
in an empty theatre in Montréal set to the album audio
Presented by Suoni Per Il Popolo
suoniperilpopolo.org
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
GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times, like only this inimitable and venerable ensemble can forge. 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.
Thanks for listening. OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN. (R.I.P. D.H.)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!
Out 02 April 2021
180gLP+10″ / CD / DL
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.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor released a string of albums from 1997-2002 widely recognized as redefining what punk- and politically-informed music can be, where longform instrumental chamber rock compositions of immense feeling and power serve as soundtracks to late capitalist alienation and resistance. F#A#∞ (1997), Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada (1999), Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000) and Yanqui U.X.O. (2002) are all variously regarded as classics of the era and genre. Godspeed’s legendary live performances, featuring multiple 16mm projectors beaming overlapping analog film loops and reels – along with the distinctive iconography, imagery and tactility of the band’s album artwork and physical LP packages – further defines its sui generis aesthetic substance.
GY!BE has issued two official band photographs in its 25 year existence (the 2nd, pictured above, being a 2010 recreation of the 1st from 1997) and has done a half-dozen collectively-answered written interviews over that same span. The band has never had a website or social media accounts. Few rock bands in our 21st century have been as steadfast in letting the work speak for itself and maintaining a simple rule about minimising participation in cultures of personality, celebrity, access, commodification and co-optation.
Following a seven-year hiatus that began in 2003, Godspeed returned to the stage in December 2010 and its post-reunion period has now lasted a decade, marked by hundreds of sold-out live shows and three additional albums (aside from the just-announced G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!) which have all been been met with high acclaim.
FIRST LISTEN VIA INDIE STORES
100+ independent record shops are receiving an advance 10” and invited to share clips of this music spinning in their stores or homes or wherever they find themselves, in isolation or otherwise, with a turntable.
(There will be no advance “singles” on Spotify, Apple or other streaming platforms. The record is not available for preorder on Amazon.)
Constellation & GY!BE support indies and urge people to preorder from them:
INDIE PREORDER PAGE
Double vinyl edition is an audiophile 180gLP + 10” pressed at Optimal (Germany) in uncoated gatefold jacket with thermographic print, colour flood interior, artworked inner sleeves and download card. CD in a custom mini-gatefold uncoated paperboard jacket with artworked inner sleeve. Illustrations by William Schmiechen.
‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! (2012)
Winner of the 2013 Polaris Music Prize
Best Of 2012: Pitchfork (#12 / Best New Music 9.3), The Guardian,
Paste, Consequence of Sound, Exclaim, The Skinny, PopMatters, SPIN,
FILTER
‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’ (2015)
Best Of 2015: A Closer Listen, Magnet, The Skinny, Norman Records,
Drowned In Sound, Crack Magazine
Luciferian Towers (2017)
Best Of 2017: Under the Radar, Norman Records, Rough Trade
Godspeed You! Black Emperor invites fans to a visual album event, presenting its concert film projections in an official capacity for the first time in the band’s 25-year history. GY!BE filmmakers/projectionists Karl Lemieux & Philippe Leonard set up their six 16mm analog projectors in an empty Cinema Imperial in Montréal, spooling dozens of film loops and short reels for a hallmark Godspeed concert experience, set to the band’s new recording.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ Constellation
Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ Bandcamp