ASMZ and Co 2008 tour dates.
Category: Music

More dates will be posted once confirmed.


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HRSTA
06 FEB 2007	Lyon, FR	Sonic
07 FEB 2007	Cler-Ferrand, FR	TBA
08 FEB 2007	Paris, FR	Instants Chavires
09 FEB 2007	Chelles, FR	Les Cuizines
14 FEB 2007	Rennes, FR	L'Antipode
15 FEB 2007	Brussels, BE	venue TBA
16 FEB 2007	Nijmegen, NL	De Onderbroek
VIC CHESNUTT
13 FEB 2008	Amsterdam, NL	Paradiso
14 FEB 2008	Brugge, BE	Cactus
15 FEB 2008	Paris, FR	Maroquinerie
16 FEB 2008	Le Havre, FR	Cabaret Electric
18 FEB 2008	Macon, FR	La Cave a Musique
19 FEB 2008	Lyon, FR	L'Epicerie Moderne
20 FEB 2008	Cler-Ferrand, FR	Cooperative Mai
21 FEB 2008	Angouleme, FR	La Nef
22 FEB 2008	Brest, FR	Cabaret Vauban
23 FEB 2008	Saint Malo, FR	Festivale Route du Rock
25 FEB 2008	Tourcoing, FR	Le Grand Mix
26 FEB 2008	Reims, FR	La Cartonnerie
27 FEB 2008	Besancon, FR	venue TBA
28 FEB 2008	Macon, FR	La Cave a Musique
SILVER MT ZION
20 MAR 2008	Montreal, QC	La Tulipe
16 MAY 2008	Burlington, VT	First Unitarian Univresalist
17 MAY 2008	Cambridge, MA	Middle East
18 MAY 2008	Northampton, MA	Pearl Street Nightclub
19 MAY 2008	Brooklyn, NY	Music Hall Of Williamsburg
20 MAY 2008	New York, NY	Bowery Ballroom
22 MAY 2008	Philadelphia, PA	First Unitarian Church
23 MAY 2008	Washington, DC	Black Cat
24 MAY 2008	Asheville, NC	Grey Eagle Tavern
25 MAY 2008	Atlanta, GA	Drunken Unicorn
26 MAY 2008	Nashville, TN	Mercy Lounge
27 MAY 2008	St Louis, MO	Bluebird
28 MAY 2008	Des Moines, IA	Vaudeville Mews
29 MAY 2008	Minneapolis, MN	Varsity Theater
30 MAY 2008	Milwaukee, WI	Turner Hall
31 MAY 2008	Chicago, IL	Logan Square Auditorium
02 JUN 2008	Detroit, MI	Magic Stick
03 JUN 2008	Columbus, OH	Skully's Music Diner
04 JUN 2008	Cleveland, OH	Grog Shop
05 JUN 2008	Milvale, PA	Mr Small's Theatre
07 JUN 2008	Toronto, ON	Lee's Palace
08 JUN 2008	Toronto, ON	Lee's Palace*
* All Ages Matinee 15:00

 

8:52 AM - 143 Comments - 123 Kudos - Add Comment

ASMZ & Co. confirmed tour dates, 2007.
Category: Music

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13 APR 2007	Rotterdam, NL	Mozaique Festival
14 APR 2007	Brussels	Domino Festival
15 APR 2007	Rennes, FR	L'Antipode
17 APR 2007	Paris, FR	Cabaret Sauvage
18 APR 2007	Angoulem, FR	La Nef
19 APR 2007	Lyon, FR	Le Rail Theatre
20 APR 2007	Lausannes, CH	Le Romandie
21 APR 2007	Bern, CH	Reithalle
22 APR 2007	Colmar, FR	Le Grillen
24 APR 2007	Nancy, FR	Austrasique
26 APR 2007	Brighton,	Komedia
27 APR 2007	Colchester, UK	Arts Centre
29 APR 2007	Somerset, UK	ATP Festival
30 APR 2007	London, UK	Scala
02 MAY 2007	Sheffield, UK	Corporation
03 MAY 2007	Oxford, UK	Zodiac
05 MAY 2007	Hasselt, BE	Zall Belgie

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A Silver Mount Zion tour dates 2007.
Category: Music

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Tour dates & info.

2006 a silver mt. zion performances:


Europe:

30 APR 2006	Paris, FR	La Cigalle

01 MAY 2006	Tourcoing, FR	Le Grand Mix
02 MAY 2006	Luxembourg, LUX	Kulturfabrik
03 MAY 2006	Brussels, BE	Botanique
04 MAY 2006	Frankfurt, GER	Brotfabrik
05 MAY 2006	Salzburg, AU	Rockhouse
06 MAY 2006	Vienna, AU	Donau Festival

08 MAY 2006	Budapest, HU	Fono
09 MAY 2006	Ljubiljana, SLO	Kud France Prescren
10 MAY 2006	Pordenone, IT	Velvet Rock Club
11 MAY 2006	Bologna, IT	Covo
12 MAY 2006	Bergamo, IT	Zero Music
13 MAY 2006	Roma, IT	Circolo Artisti
14 MAY 2006	Genova, IT	Stazio Fiera
15 MAY 2006	Luzern, CH	Boa
16 MAY 2006	Koln, GER	GEBAUDE 9
17 MAY 2006	Berlin, GER	Maria
18 MAY 2006	Hamburg, GER	Knust
19 MAY 2006	Amsterdam, NL	Paradiso
20 MAY 2006	Diksmuide, BE	4AD

23 MAY 2006	Reims, FR	Cartonnerie
24 MAY 2006	Toulouse, FR	Le Vents du Sud
25 MAY 2006	Bordeaux, FR	Le 4sans
26 MAY 2006	Nantes, FR	Olympic
27 MAY 2006	Poitiers, FR	Comfort Modern

29 MAY 2006	Brighton, UK	St Georges Church
30 MAY 2006	Bristol, UK	Bierkeller

01 JUN 2006	Glasgow, UK	ABC1
02 JUN 2006	Leeds, UK	Brudnel Social Club
03 JUN 2006	Nottingham, UK	Rescue Room
04 JUN 2006	Manchester, UK	Mint Lounge

06 JUN 2006	London, UK	Koko

North America:

Wed-Jul 26, 06  Cambridge       MA      Middle East                        
Thu-Jul 27, 06  Portland        ME      SPACE    
Fri-Jul 28, 06  Brooklyn        NY      Northsix         
Sat-Jul 29, 06  New York        NY      Bowery Ballroom  
Sun-Jul 30, 06  Port Monmouth   NJ      Middletown VFW Hall
Mon-Jul 31, 06  Philadelphia    PA      First Unitarian Church Sanctuary        
Tue-Aug  1, 06  Baltimore       MD      Ottobar  
Wed-Aug  2, 06  Washington      DC      Black Cat  
Thu-Aug  3, 06  Columbus        OH      Wexner Center    
Fri-Aug  4, 06  Chicago         IL      Empty Bottle
Sat-Aug  5, 06  Chicago         IL      Empty Bottle
Sun-Aug  6, 06  Milwaukee       WI      Stonefly Brewery (formerly Onopa)   
Mon-Aug  7, 06  Minneapolis     MN      Varsity Theater  
Thu-Aug 10, 06  Saskatoon       SK      Amigos   
Fri-Aug 11, 06  Edmonton        AB      Sidetrack Cafe  
Sat-Aug 12, 06  Calgary         AB      Broken City      
Wed-Aug 16, 06  Vancouver       BC      Richards on Richards
Thu-Aug 17, 06  Victoria        BC      Central Bar and Grill
Fri-Aug 18, 06  Seattle         WA      Neumos
Sat-Aug 19, 06  Portland        OR      Doug Fir Lounge
Mon-Aug 21, 06  San Francisco   CA      Great American Music Hall          
Tue-Aug 22, 06  Los Angeles     CA      Ex_Plx   
Thu-Aug 24, 06  Denver          CO      Larimer Lounge
Fri-Aug 25, 06  Lawrence        KS      Bottleneck       
Sat-Aug 26, 06  Louisville      KY      Headliners Music Hall
Sun-Aug 27, 06  Cleveland Hts   OH      Grog Shop
Mon-Aug 28, 06  Harrisburg      PA      Underground at Stage Two          
Tue-Aug 29, 06  Buffalo         NY      Soundlab


godspeed you black emperor currently have no plans to tour.

a new LP by thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra and tra-la-la band entitled "horses in the sky" will be released on vinyl march 7, 2005 in europe (march 21 in north america). it will be followed by a CD release on march 21, 2005 in europe (april 4 in north america).

former godspeed member michael moya's band hrsta has joined the constellation records roster and will be releasing their second album in may. titled "stem stem in electro", the album features appearances by members of hangedup and sackville as well as godspeed violinist sophie trudeau.

godspeed you black emperor are currently on extended hiatus. the collective has not disbanded.

an EP by the silver mountain reveries has been released during their recent european tour and will be released on constellation records in may. it is titled, "pretty little lightning paw".

some more beautiful photographs from the band's recent tours have been posted to the 'images' section of the site.

1. sow some lonesome corners so many flowers bloom
2. babylon was built on fire, starsnostars
3. american motor over smoldered field
4. goodbye desolate railyard

Godspeed you! black emperor are featured in the soundtrack of the new Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach) film. The band agreed to allow Boyle to use "Easting Hastings" ("Sad Mafioso," specifically), but the song does not appear on the soundtrack CD. Apparently the song appears briefly in some of the trailers for the film, along side Brian Eno. Click here for a brief interview with Boyle about the band. The film released in the UK last year, and released in the US on 27 June (outside of the US and UK, click here).

"yanqui u.x.o." the new LP by godspeed you! black emperor was released on 4 november 2002 in europe and 11 november 2002 in north america. The track-listing is (click the links for mp3 samples):

1. 09-15-00
2. 09-15-00
3. rockets fall on rocket falls
4. motherfucker=redeemer
5. motherfucker=redeemer

a new set fire to flames album was released on 31 march (9 april in north america) entitled "telegraphs in negative / mouths trapped in static."

a new molasses album was released on 1 april entitled "slow messe."

a split release between set fire to flames and the acid mothers temple is planned in the near future on alien8 recordings.

"l'Autre" by et sans is now available via Locust Music. et sans is a collaborative effort between Roger Tellier-Craig (Fly Pan Am & Godspeed you black emperor!) and Alexandre St-Onge (Shalabi Effect, Undo)

6:38 PM - 2 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Various reviews.

jerrod hood, the declaration, october 1998

i'm not sure what happened. i showed up for work around nine as usual and went about my business -- setting up, counting the till, stocking. i ordered dinner and went back to the basement to wait for it. there were a lot of people milling around, and on the stage, spilling over into the floor, was a small city of amps, stands, guitars, violins, and things i vaguely recognized as musical instruments. inhabited by roughly 10 people, this metropolis shifted and bled into form, annexing a significant portion of the floor in front of the stage. the doors opened slightly after the city ceased its restless movement, and i served as i was chosen to serve. my dinner hadn't come yet. as the lights dimmed, movement in the city swam back, and it began to produce sound. i served. i made change. i wondered about my dinner. motion above the city, on the wall, caught my attention. from somewhere behind the growing crowd assembled just beyond the city limits, someone had begun to project images. the city droned, it began a subtle noise that lasted for an indeterminate period. it grew. it receded. it grew again. from underneath this din came the shreds of melody. a guitar. some strings. a voice, taped, looped, worn, passed over. the melody gained, twisted, sought refuge in the strings. i turned at the tap of a hand on my shoulder, disoriented. i served. i turned back toward the city. something strange and beautiful began. it ended. i looked at my watch and thought about the hour and a half that i had just lost. my dinner had come. i hadn't noticed. it was cold. those assembled had come to see low. what had just happened? godspeed you black emperor!

maybe my flair for the dramatic has gotten the best of me -- this band inspires it. no, demands it. i must say, this is the biggest shock my system has suffered in many months. when i heard that low was to pay a visit to our fair city, i was pleased. when i heard they were bringing along label-mates godspeed you black emperor!, i thought, "godspeed you black emperor!?" no, now I know -- godspeed you black emperor! in some sense this band is what you might expect from kranky, home of labradford and jessamine: drony, ambient, epic music -- the soundtrack to the post-apocalypse. maybe that's what is going on here, but add melody, not just any melody, but that brand that reaches down your throat, grabs your colon and shakes it vigorously. standing in the basement of the tokyo rose watching the show was a lot like having someone intermittently rub your temples and run over you with a combine. that is to say, this band has learned the lesson of dynamics. scratch that; they teach the class on dynamics. unfortunately, this may be the place where i have to distinguish between the live band and the recorded material the band has produced.

okay, so let's talk about the album (as if this were a record review or something). the cd i have in my hot little hands is a remix of the original vinyl release that had a limited 500 copy pressing on constellation. the original tapes were recorded at hotel 2 tango, the nonet's (their van is huge) performance/recording space in montreal (yes, they're canadian), then mixed and sequenced for cd in toronto at chemical sound (i know you're fascinated) where two pieces were added. one can't really talk about this record in terms of songs, really; it's more like movements. the cd has three tracks, each containing three or four pieces/movements/units/whatever, and the album works fluidly, moving from bit to bit with ambient noises, strange tape loops, and voice-overs filling the void between instrumental outbursts. all i can really say about it is that it is beautiful. intense, lush, voluptuous, supple, full-bodied with good legs and oaky overtones, this album takes a little effort to listen to but pays serious dividends in terms of north-of-the-border enjoyment (i.e. don't plan on just popping it into your car stereo unless you plan on driving well past staunton).

if the album stutters at all, it only does so in relation to their live performance. you get the feeling while listening that when things get huge, they should get even huger. it seems like the music wants to break out of the confines of a compact disc, maybe transcend something, but just can't. on the other hand, maybe my stereo just sucks. then again, maybe it's just impossible to capture on tape the sound of someone's faith in the world being renewed.

fred mills, magnet, july/august 98

this instrumental montreal nine-piece with the unwieldy name unquestionably fits the post-rock bill without necessarily fitting any titular mold. in fact, godspeed breaks it. on the surface, the band's existential morricone-esque soundscapes, wrought by desolate guitar twang, echoey dobro slide, sweetly mournful violin and cello, and an astonishingly patient rhythm section (the bassist and dual percussionists apparently took grade-school lessons in "dynamic tension"), bear favorable comparison to late, great tribal rockers savage republic, the first a small good thing record (slim westerns) and recent work by labradford. yet, by incorporating sonic nuances as disparate as glockenspiel, bagpipes, vocal samples and/or snippets of recorded urban sounds (such as street-corner preacher), moments of silence and tape loops, the group chronicles epiphanies of a radically unique nature. each of these three lengthy cuts can be served up as staggering psychedelia for a headphone or surround-sound context - or as accompaniment for your daily household movements wherein textures vary remarkably as you walk down the hall, pass by an open window, etc. notice I didn't say background music. godspeed is "ambient interactive": it trails you, taps your shoulder, turns your head around (such as during a roaring, mid-song guitar/strings crescendo of "east hastings"), even darts past, daring you to catch up. f#a# infinity will not only enhance your life, it will become part of the soundtrack.

james oldham, nme, june 1998

anyone frightened by glockenspiels should turn away now. godspeed you black emperor! are a marvellous (mostly instrumental) ten-piece band from montreal, featuring twin percussionists, three guitarists, cello, violin and glockenspiel players and - inevitably - a man making strange sucking noises with a tape recorder. and some bagpipes.

stranger still, the end result of this frankly ludicrous musical setup is not an avant garde big country record in moose antlers, but an album of soothing, repetitious beauty.

anyway, godpseed's debut album is a genuine classic, which will remind you of either mogwai soundtracking spaghetti westerns or the dirty three in a freezer factory. in the space of three tracks stretched over 60 minutes, we're treated to an ever-shifting collage of spiralling violins, echoing guitars, air-raid sirens, a brass section, distressed wasps, an occasional glockenspiel solo and some wilfully apocalyptic samples along the lines of, "the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel". well, quite.

the album closes with 'providence', a 29-minute instrumental epic that's part the good, the bad and the ugly and part spiritualized drone freakout. obviously, it's brilliant. and it's not every day you get to say that about instrumental music from canada. still, that's godspeed you black emperor! for you. crazy name, er, crazy guys.

matt galloway, now magazine, august 1998

cram 10 headstrong, unhinged musicians in the same tiny room for any significant length of time and you'll either set off a civil war or emerge with something completely out of the ordinary.

montreal's sprawling instrumental art-rock combo godspeed you black emperor! managed to achieve the latter, but with a lineup that includes a cellist, two violinists, glockenspiel, tape loops and projections, in addition to the usual guitar/bass/drums, anything less would have been a disappointment.

last year's stunning f#a# infinity sessions - released on vinyl by montreal indie constellation and recently pressed up on cd with extra material by chicago imprint kranky - seemed to come out of nowhere. sounding more like an old-time radio play than a conventional album, the disc interspersed dreamy dust bowl soundscapes and gradually unfolding prog epics with disconcerting lee marvin voice-overs and field recordings of chugging steam trains. and while it all works as one continuous 60-minute program, putting the noise to tape apparently wasn't as easy as it sounds.

getting the 10 members of godspeed in the same room to talk is impossible enough - they communicate collaboratively by e-mail. the scene in the studio is apparently outrageous.

"the writing process in this band is like trying to shit 50-pound bowling balls," guitarist efrim eloquently explains. "generally, it works likes this - someone comes up with a simple riff and starts playing it, and then everybody starts playing along at the highest volume imaginable until the original riff is completely lost.

"then we stop playing and nobody talks for a while. then someone loses their temper and disappears into the corner. someone will earnestly try to suggest a structure or game plan, but everyone is too busy smoking cigarettes and sighing to listen or care. then we'll all start playing again, just as loudly and stupidly. then someone else has a tantrum. then practice is over.

"eventually, we book a tour or make recording plans, proceed to ignore the impending deadline as best we can, and then, at the last minute, hammer out shit in a spiralling panic and compliment each other on our savvy and flair."

comedic chaos aside, godspeed do manage to get their shit together to perform the occasional revelatory show. american and european tours are scheduled for this winter. an appearance friday (august 14) at club shanghai with montreal's intriguing guitar/oud/tabla/tape-loop driven shalabi effect will be followed by a late-night session at the gas station studio. the results of that meltdown see the light this fall as an ep on kranky.

"we're more of a real regular band than a lot of bands out there," efrim insists. "touring is still where most of our stuff gets written, though. the live stuff is always a bit more chaotic and ramshackle, while the studio stuff seems a bit more timid and restrained.

"someday we will hit the nail on the head and sleep good for a change."

matt hanks, ray gun, september 1998

two years ago, the olivia tremor control released dusk at cubist castle, music for an "unrealized film script." though they make no claims as such, canada's godspeed you black emperor! have taken a similar line of creative precocity one step further, offering music and script for an unrealized armageddon.

f#a#oo is an epic, three-act narrative on the boundlessness and inertia of a world (or perhaps, just a band) stripped of context; a telling limited only by its single-cd format, and the listener's imagination. the album commences with an apocalyptic, "day after"-esque dialogue describing mass suicide and dead flags, toppled buildings and burning skylines. pretty gloomy stuff for certain, but this intro articulately foretells the hour of music that lies ahead. in that hour the nine-piece gybe! slither through lilting string melodies, barely-there electronic drones, and full-bore guitar onslaughts. but their movements are always linear and plot-driven, with no single section sounding remotely like its preecessor.

in a live setting, gybe! utilize twin film projectors to flesh out their script, but if your audio-visual synapses are up for a good stoking and your attention span is of hearty stock, f#a#oo can be an exceptionally rewarding album on its own. it's an enhanced cd of an entirely different sort.

david keenan, the wire, july 1998

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Interview in making music, august 99

Peter Bate meets some of the real musicians behind the enigmatic noise sculpture that is GYBE!

Godspeed You Black Emperor! are a Canadian nine-piece whose eerie blend of the rural and the post-industrial - elegiacal strings with spaced-out guitars - and bleak and lyrical images (sample: "We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death") have produced a recent frenzy of 'apocalyptic' and 'pre-Millennial' references in the press.

Their latest release, the clumsy-yet-aptly-titled 'Slow Riot For A New Zero Kanada EP', is indeed an ideal Doomsday-chasing soundtrack, with its brooding tom toms, and the hiss and fizz of the background drone...All electrical potential - the calm before the storm.

I caught up with GYBE! in London's most beautiful venue - the exquisite Union Chapel in Islington. Complete with pulpit, pews and stained glass windows, where better to tune into the chime of their cathedralesque beauty and brave their Book Of Revelations rock.

Dual drummers Ozzie and Bruce, and founder member guitarist Efrim, take time out from the middle of a gruelling European tour to scupper the soothsayer theory and warn against nothing more ominous than the dangers of sleep deprivation:

Efrim: "We formed about five years ago with two guitars, a bass and tape loops. We didn't have much of a vision at the time. The original idea was to play one note for one hour. That was the first brick, and we've built on that, but we still have that first brick buried somewhere in the wall as the cornerstone.

"If we've developed an apocalyptic streak then it's an unconscious thing, just a product of the time we're living in. A friend of ours said we sounded like the end of the world was coming - but there's also a kernel of hope in there too.

"I think right now my only vision would be a good night's sleep; but with nine members of the band we can't afford to take a day off..."

From its minimalist beginnings the band quickly expanded, till the musical logistics of a 15-piece proved too much and they trimmed themselves down to a manageable nine. So what prompted three guitarists to become a semi-orchestral nonet? An aural attempt to echo the expanding entropy of the big bang? No such luck.

"I think it was based more on who was around at the time," says drummer/percussionist Ozzie. "We knew a cellist and a violinist so they joined us."

"We get an orchestral sound because we have so many people playing together, interacting," says second drummer Bruce. "When you're trying to allow space for each other it makes for an organic growth, a kinda parallel evolution - it's almost like a jazz big band.

"There are nine people in this band with nine different influences. No one likes New Country, but I think that's the only common ground."

If GYBE are reluctant to theorise about their sound, or even shed any light on their influences, it fits with the genuinely arcane anonymity they've generated around themselves.

On-stage no one utters a word, and it's left to the tape loops, both audio and video, to add a narrative thread to the instrumental proceedings.

In diabolical Robert Johnson fashion, very few pictures of the band exist. Those that do generally show distant monochrome figures walking along converging railway tracks. They inhabit the shadowy world where their individual imaginations merge into a collective consciousness.

Efrim: "There was a wish to go beyond the conventional format of rock bands - that two-guitars-bass and drums verse/chorus/verse/chorus thing. There's no one leader of the band. Different people contribute different things; different flavours, which make it more complicated.

"When we started out it was very improvisational, but after a while we'd played together so much that we knew each others cues - it's like jazz, when you can be waiting for the snare to come in before a tempo change."

Did they set out with the express objective of creating compositions of such epic proportions?

"It's definitely a huge sound, and I feel privileged to be part of a band of so many people who can create such a sound and have managed to keep it together for this long."

Bruce: "Once it gets going all you can do is hold on and keep playing - it's like a racing mob."

Efrim: "Sometimes when we're onstage it feels like I have this huge hose which we're squirting all around. Sometimes it can be directed with more precision, and others it's too powerful to control."

Bruce: "Now it's kinda semi-structured, but we're starting to take it back to how was in the early days - more improvisational, because that's when it's exciting, when you're more creative and come up with new ideas."

I investigate further for clues in and around their record collections - they do admit to liking Mogwai, and Efrim says he listened to jazz when he woke up that morning...

Ozzie: "Some of us do listen to jazz and several members have been classically trained. A few of us read music, but not enough to be able to hand out scores.

"Lately we've been writing scores in our own form of code, and when we're onstage we're communicating with nods and raised eyebrows...and we're getting better at lip-reading."

There are reference points, but they're ultimately blown away, consumed by the band's twister like intensity. Considering their multi-layered line-up and the crescendos of sonic density, it seems almost paradoxical how they wield silence as an equally powerful weapon. Their evocative wide open spaces have been compared to the western twang of Ennio Morricone.

I suggest their soundscapes might owe a debt to Ry Cooder's Paris Texas, albeit the charred and toxic wastelands of a post-nuclear equivalent, and they give nods of approval for that movie's influence.

Efrim: "Yeah, it's amazing how that movie soundtrack came to represent American landscapes in so many minds - that slide guitar sound."

Ozzie: "We get that landscape thing quite a lot, but Montreal is really squished in, some of us have never been to the desert. I've seen them in cowboy films, and they look pretty cool. We do drive through a lot of open spaces when travelling between gigs, but I don't think that influences our music very much."

If not sand-scapes, then perhaps ice-scapes exert a subtle, maybe even masochistic, influence.

"There was an ice storm in Montreal a couple of winters ago," says Ozzie - "it was raining ice for several days and it was like the Arctic. We didn't have power for five weeks. Everyone was freaking out - but we thought it was great. OK, it was cold when you woke up in the morning, and you couldn't have a hot shower, but that wasn't such a hardship. To us and our friends, it was an adventure."

GYBE's plans for the foreseeable future don't stretch far beyond finishing the rest of the European tour, and then surviving a similarly extensive tour of the States.

"We're in a state of war for the next few months," Ozzie jokes. "We're looking forward to peace time, and hoping to stay alive till then."

For most of us, pre-Millennium tension amounts to little more than the pressure to enjoy ourselves on that fateful night; but for Godspeed You Black Emperor!, there's also the mad rush of encroaching fame, which will hangover long into the Millennium - and mean lots more sleepless nights.

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Interview in the scotsman, 2000

It's a lone voice, deep and sonorous, equal parts paranoia and prophecy: "The car is on fire and there is no driver at the wheel and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides. A dark wind blows. The government is corrupt and we are all so many drunks with the radio on and the curtains drawn. We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death ."

So begins Dead Flag Blues, the first track on f#a#oo, the debut album by Godspeed You Black Emperor! (if you don't count the release of 33 copies of a demo tape, all lights f****d up on the hairy amp drooling, as an album).

It is a thing of wonder and brutal beauty, f#a#00, a coarse and caustic instrumental examination of everything that's wrong with the society that surrounds us. Ennio Morricone textures battle with angle-grinding guitars and church bells, folky mandolins strum behind the teeth-grinding screech of a steam train threatening to go off the rails. Tape loops and even bagpipes are used to eerie, inventive effect. In between swooning slide-guitar melodies and minor-key cellos, there's an underlying sense of fear, an implicit despair that's as easy to succumb to as it is beautiful to listen to.

After forming seven years ago in Montreal, with "two guitars, a bass and a tape loop", Godspeed have expanded from two founder members - guitarist Efrim and bassist Mauro (no surnames) - into a quasi-orchestral band that numbers anything from nine to 15 members. The Morricone-goes-apocalyptic stylings of f#a#° were followed by last year's Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP. Ostensibly comprising two tracks, it weighs in at nearly half an hour; its intricate, hypnotic demeanour a logical progression from f#a#°'s frazzled anger. There's just as much noise here, but it's executed with the kind of subtlety, poise and restraint that Philip Glass and Michael Nyman strive towards. The rambling voice of one Blaise Bailey Finnegan the Third appears from out of the ether on Slow Riot's second track, BBF3; he's a street preacher taped by a member of the band, and his scabrous, paranoid opinions create a thread on which the music is hung.

There's political commentary in here, but it's in the crescendo of guitars and drums and the predatory swoops of the violins. Finnegan seems to be the political antithesis of the band, a ranting conservative spouting kneejerk, reactionary solutions to infinitely complex problems.

Everything, here, takes on meaning.

"I think that everything is coloured by politics," says guitarist Efrim over a crackly transatlantic phone line. "I don't know if the music we produce is political as such, you know? I think that we do the best we can. It isn't apolitical, I don't think that there is such a thing as an apolitical lifestyle, but ." A ruminative pause. ". I think the best thing we can do is talk about what we think, about what we consider to be the politics of making music."

Which are?

"That's a little vague, I know, but you'd need to give me a more specific question to answer on that," he responds. He's reticent, but firm, attacking what he sees as a culture of ephemera. Here, the politics of making music are not so much related to the music itself, but to how it is perceived and interpreted; how it's presented.

Eschewing the standard biographical information and styled photos that constitute most bands' sleeves, Godspeed instead deliver screen prints and twisted, incoherent notes about where they are and what they do; f#a#oo came with a hand-made sleeve and a copper coin alleged to have been "flattened by passing trains". No band photos. No surnames. No details other than those which are strictly necessary. "It's a conscious decision," Efrim says. "Who wants to look at photos of the people who made the music? What does that have to do with anything? Right from the start, we knew we didn't want to do that. We didn't really see the point in doing interviews where we talked about our favourite bands or anything." So that's one to stroke off the list of questions.

"There's so much bullshit written," he emphatically states, fired up now. "So many unnecessary words said." Thus: everything said ought to have a point, a function and a purpose? "Idealistically, yes," he agrees. "But that's never going to happen, not on a large scale. I mean, ideally we'd like to start a dialogue about a lot of things other than music, placing music in the context of larger issues."

And the larger issues here are the political ones; it's impossible to live in a vacuum and confine yourself to having tunnel vision, he contends. Music here is only part of a far larger, and far blacker canvas.

"I think that there's some sort of ." begins Efrim. He stops again, searching for the right words. "I think we're all f****d," he suggests. "I'm not talking about any sort of Generation X bullshit or any of that. What I mean is that there's a large group of people who have realised that things are really bad, and who realise that we're all working the same shitty jobs with the same bleak f***ing future. I think that there's got to be a way to address that and I think that music is just one of the ways to address it."

This is what's political, Efrim argues. Music as a means of escape and as a means of comment. "That's what we strive for," he muses. "I mean, we make a lot of mistakes, but there's a lot of things we didn't count on happening. All we want to do is to try and contribute to a meaningful dialogue. Ideally, there would be dialogues happening all over, about how people cope, about what we're doing with ourselves."

To caricature Godspeed You Black Emperor! as "the last great band of the 20th century" (as one magazine did last year) is to miss the point, says Efrim. "All that bombast - that wasn't what we wanted to say. I think that all we can do right now is try and set up an honest conversation about the fact that people don't know what the f*** is going on."

It's inevitable, however, if you place yourselves in the public eye, if you release records and tour them, and if you consent to interviews, that somewhere along the line, some people are going to happily grasp the wrong end of the stick. It's a difficult situation to be stuck in.

Attempt, as Godspeed have done, to adopt an anonymous persona and let the music speak for itself, and charges of deliberate enigmatism and creating a cult of invisibility will be thrown around with abandon. Conversely, saturate the media with images and words and there's every risk that those same words will be twisted into well-aimed arrows, slung right back in your face.

"That's the way it is," says a resigned Efrim. "I don't know how to do a better job of avoiding that. Other than talking less."

He's half-joking, but there's a point here. If you're going to make music that's as powerful, as beautiful, as expressive as this, then you've got to let it speak.

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Interview in The Wire, May 2000, by David Keenan

 

LIFE STINKS Montreal group Godspeed You Black Emperor! are the reluctant heroes of avant rock, whose electric elegies and vaulting idealism seem perpetually at odds with the world. David Keenan meets them on their European tour for an unprecedented face to face interview. Listen... we all stop paying rent tomorrow and have a meeting somewhere, all the millions of us who lose everyday and know that things are fucked and know that we're fucked and that mostly we're powerless to change it. We stop paying rent tomorrow and sit down and figure out what the fuck a little. Let's do that - let's not talk about rock music anymore, let's ease up on the careless adjectives a little bit, let's fuck the rent and have ourselves a little meeting about the state of things finally ... and let's stop talking about the millenium. THE END OF THE WORLD WILL NEVER FUCKING COME... Love, Godspeed You Maudlin Emperor! 21/6/99 Nine months after the above missive landed on my desktop, Godspeed You Black Emperor! and I finally get to hold our first meeting in a grim bunker beneath the Garage, the Glasgow rock venue where they are due to perform as part of the British leg of their spring European tour. Seven of the group's nine members sprawl over couches in various stages of exhaustion as I fidget with my recorder, very much aware that tonight, I'm the asshole, the latest in a line of media representatives ready (somehow, God knows) to birth a whole new movement or scene with a deft flick of the wrist, here to reduce the many voices of Godspeed You Black Emperor! to a series of glib soundbites. In the space of a year the Godspeed orchestra - nine players in all, combining epic, weeping strings, rugged guitar trekking propulsive dynamics and eschatological tape loops - has been dragged kicking and screaming from their Montreal commune into the pages of any magazine desperate to weave the world-weary loom of Godspeed's debut long player, f#a#oo, into its own gloomy, attention-grabbing pre-millennial predictions. Meanwhile, the artists' reluctance to play the media game has only served to heighten the mystery shrouding this group of disenfranchised Canadian outsiders, who have since gone forth and multiplied into an indeterminate number of similarly militant Montreal groups, many of them sharing the same vision and often the same personnel as Godspeed. Their names - A Silver Mount Zion, Fly Pan Am, Do Make Say Think - and titles ("Blown Out Joy From Heaven's Mercied Hole", "Dead Flag Blues") read like hermetic codes, and discovering them feels like an initiation into the mysteries. For all the group's press exposure, however, the doomed Lee Marvin-like drawl opening f#a#oo has lost none of its emotive power: "The car's on fire and there's no dnver at the wheel and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides and a dark wind blows. . . " I first made contact with Godspeed back in August 1998, and since then I've received intermittent mails, rants and manifestos, most of which, while uniformly articulate and poetic, rarely touched on music. Instead they were filled with self-doubt and self-loathing, obsessing over the repercussions of their inexplicable rise to prominence (from small rock toilets to a sold-out Royal Festival Hall show in 18 months). They're genuinely baffled about all the media fuss they've generated, especially as they feel that almost all of it has left them burned and bummed by several journalists and publications. Consequently they're ultra-guarded in interviews - when they give them at all. Tonight's Glasgow visit affords us our first face-to-face meeting. With seven members present it makes for a tough conversation. The hydra-headed Godspeed represents such a wide variety of opinion and political persuasion that virtually every statement is echoed or prefaced with the rejoinder that it's only "one person's opinion". While their commitment to running Godspeed as a co-operative is certainly admirable, it also serves occasionally to paralyse them. Every question is greeted with a thick wall of silent thought before being passed around the group, dissected and thrown limp back into my lap. At times I feel like I'm an extra in a scene from Ken Loach's wordy Spanish Civil War drama Land And Freedom, such is the level of debate over the slightest of semantics. Ultimately, however, it's totally endearing to witness a group wrestling with their conscience, completely unimpressed by the myriad 'options' opened up to them by their newfound fame. "I think the glory days are over," guitarist David Bryant asserts. "When we first started out, we pretty much knew everyone in the room. We knew why we were there and why they were there - you could talk to them afterwards and they told you why. Now we play in front of 700 people - they leave, you don't talk to anyone. It's more and more fucking alienating every time we come over here and it's less satisfying on a certain level. Not musically: obviously we would have stopped doing it if we weren't interested in doing the music we do, but on the level of having communication with the people you're playing to - this presence in front of you that doesn't respond other then 'Wooh!'" "There's barricades in front of the stage tonight - that's a fine example of lack of contact," interrupts cellist Norsola. "That's really like 'rock show'." "Well, it's not too late," cuts in guitarist Efrim, rounding on them both. "I always thought that if we got to that stage we were going to find out ways to fuck with the space we play in. If this is the reality that we're in right now - we're playing to 700 people and 75 per cent of them don't know why they're here, miss the context completely, just getting off on some other level - there must be some way to fuck with that. Call it a power or whatever, there must be something you can do to fuck with that and I'm hoping that if we're going to continue to play shows on this level - which I don't know, I'm not into doing that - I think that we've got to figure out a way to change what we're doing. These places are completely rigid - the dynamic is just stuccoed into every surface of the room, into everything... the walls are angled and everything is laid out so that there's a smooth flow of people to the bar. It's like scientists map it out - a little room for people to consume in and then to get the fuck out of as quickly as possible. The economics are set up so that everybody gets fleeced, meanwhile the band is in this little picture frame with the speakers and everything..." he trails off. "With the breweries above us pulling our strings," deadpans percussionist Aidan. "But the point is, we don't have to do this," Efrim retorts. "We could play somewhere else to, like, 200 people - the point is, again, we do a shitty-assed job. Sure, we can make excuses. Yeah, we want a place with a big stage, a PA that's loud enough to handle what we do; yeah, you don't find that stuff regularly in some idealised, glorious place that we're talking about playing in. Those spaces have to be built, but they're not going to be built. So we fuck up - it's our fault, it's our fault, we fuck up... we came over here, we're here, we're dealing with it but nobody made us do this... it's all our fault... I don't think we have a fucking clue I mean, it's a real simple story. It's a bunch of people in Montreal who started playing in a band and then all of a sudden they had to deal with some things which they didn't know how to deal with and maybe that story's got some value - I don't think it's got enormous value. I don't think it'll have much value in ten years time but right now maybe it's vaguely interesting." It went like this: in 1994 Efrim and his friends Mauro and Moya were offered a gig supporting another local group, Steak 72. Rehearsals only began a week before the show. "We figured the easiest thing to do would be to play one note for half an hour," Efrim explains "I think that's how the long thing started, the idea of having long pieces and also the thing of playing in the dark and sitting down - some of the more superficial elements." As a duo, Efrim and Mauro had already recorded All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling, a cassette album in a ridiculous run of 33, when they heard a rumour that some people were looking to start up a new performance space. "We called up these guys, Don and Ian, about the possibility of playing at this space they were setting up but it ended up that they didn't get the space they started a label instead." 'These guys', Don Wilkie and lan Ilavsky, inaugurated their new Constellation label with the appropriately titled "New Era Building" 7" and the "Grey" CD, both by Montreal quartet Sofa. As an opening statement of intent, it's beautifully precise - Sofa take the physical punch, the mainline jamming and divebomb pirouettes of SST-era hardcore and explode it with melancholic moodswings. In the meantime Godspeed had started work on their towering vinyl debut, f#a#oo, which they originally planned to release themselves as a double 7" set. Invited in to help ride the faders during the recording session, Ilavsky and Wilkie offered to put it out as the third Constellation release. By now Montreal's music community was on the upsurge. A bizarre quintet called Sackville, who marry fairly generic post-rock moves with a disturbed folk sensibility on their Constellation disc The Principles Of Science, had already been playing out before Godspeed's inception, but after 94 the floodgates really opened. Aidan was playing in Exhaust, a unit fuelled by motorik klang and spliced tapes, before Godspeed stole him and Roger, of Fly Pan Am (who in turn intermittently played host to Godspeed cellist Norsola and notorious sound sculptor Alexandre St-Onge). "I think that in the last three years there's been three or four different groups of people making spaces for people to play what they want to play," Efrim explains. "I think that plays some part in it you end up with a real supportive, small... uh, that's a cliche," he trails off. "What l'm trying to say is that there's a lot of stuff going on that got people listening to what everyone else was doing... it's about as difficult to get gigs in Montreal as it is in a lot of medium to large size cities in North America and Europe . There's a few shitty rock clubs - not as many as other large cities, but at the same time rent is cheap - it's cheap to live there. There's a drifting population of people who only stick around for two or three years and a lot of people who are there to try to involve themselves in building something, so you end up with a lot of people willing to put energy into putting on smaller shows in smaller spaces that aren't rock clubs." "The fact that there's a lot of disused industrial space helps too," continues Aidan. "A lot of lofts you can rent for pretty cheap people can rent a loft and live there and have parties and have their friends' bands play there." Bruce talks of a "quiet revolution" that has taken place in Montreal over the last decade, caused by an exodus of many English-speaking residents, unhappy with the increasing dominance of French-Canadian culture, where an inability to speak French has become a definite handicap to your employment prospects. But then, Montreal has developed from a small 17th century French colony into one of the largest French speaking cities in tne world. As its downtown industrial areas became rundown and abandoned, musicians, artists and film makers moved into their large, cheap spaces. "Montreal is a weird city," says Efrim. "It's really liberal about some things and really not about others... the police, for instance, are completely out of control." "I mean you won't get hassled for jaywalking," Aidan adds. "But if you're a black man you're more likely to get shot in the back." "As more people got involved in Godspeed, it became a bit more interesting," says Efrim, picking up the trail of the group's genesis. "We're at a hard point in trying to figure out what we're doing next because we don't want to be one-trick ponies, and I think that the moment you start questioning what you're going to do next, things get confusing. We're certainly at a confusing place right now. At the beginning it was more conscious... in terms of it being a collective, of being kind of loose, of writing long pieces. In terms of having this sort of instrumentation, in terms of not having a singer, in terms of using tape loops, in terms of backing films - in terms of utilising a certain visual aesthetic there was consciousness there, but I think what's good about Godspeed doesn't have very much to do with any of those elements... everyone in this band has done a good job of working within it. Before Godspeed a lot of us had been interested in hardcore... well, that weird period between hardcore and what's now called indie rock... that period of five years where those two things met. I don't know what you would call that, but there was tons of shit going on all the time. Black Flag is certainly part of it but that's been sort of tainted by Henry Rollins and what he's gotten up to since then..." Godspeed's self-image is a world away from the press perception of them. Though they're often depicted as spearheading some vague, anti-rock avant consortium, they see themselves as resolutely 'in the tradition'. From groups like Black Flag and The Minutemen they've taken the whole work ethic, the 'serious as your life' drive that sent Henry Rollins and co across the States in the back of a van, rehearsing on their nights off and sleeping on floors. They also share their forefathers' fiercely independent spirit - the feeling that this music belongs to 'us' and should be protected from corrupting, diluting, undeserving influences at all costs. Of course Godspeed rock (note for English readers: this is nothing to be scared of) - three loud guitars, two loud basses, two drummers - they understand the beauty of volume and power, that rock is most powerful when its trajectory isn't fixed, when it simply GOES. All that matters is the amount of revs you give it and the size of your runway. On a good night, when Godspeed are wound up, their peaks are at once stellar and primitively satisfying on a real gutsy level. However, as with all real-time group efforts, they have as many off-nights as on, and when they fail to achieve lift-off they come over bored, like they're just ploughing through the same routine one more time. Their debut London gig at the Garage in 98 was a case in point but even by that time, the buzz was such that they only had to show up to send the attendant sheep into paroxysms of puzzled ecstasy. ... Sometimes the shows are overwhelming, with the six-foot stage and the alienated/alienating audiences. You start this whole rock music process with a healthy distrust of the context and you get hypersensitive to your own role in the awful, ridiculous pigpen but we are always in the process of figuring out what the fuck and sometimes it is a good thing to fork over yr money to witness it maybe? Other nights you are just some minor version of U fucking 2 with the squat black wedge monitors glaring at you like an accusation or a barrier and you'd rather be at home petting yr cat and feeling sorry for yourself. And sometimes the venues are like death-camps and you picture yourself stuck there in the audience, feeling only half-drunk, ripped off and hateful; and you can't stop fixating on bad memoried of rip-off evenings spent watching some jaded wanker poseurs screaming me! ME! ME! And the pisswater in the plastic cup going warm between your fingers. What do you do to change that? What can we do not to contribute to that? What can you do not to contribute to this whole state of affairs? Musicians, critics, bar owners, bookers, etc, we're all gui1ty, we're all cowards, weaklings, liars mostly. We got excuses and rationalisations and justifications but we're all basically lame... 21/6/99 "Sometimes we have shows where I think the only good thing you could get out of it is seeing a bunch of people who are unhappy being in a cage," Efrim sighs. "Like a bunch of sick monkeys sometimes it's like that and maybe at the very best it's all we can do it's just an example of people trying to deal with this shit - maybe there's something else but I don't think we've figured out that something else." "The thing is, the more we go along, the more we compromise," blurts David "I think we just completely change the rules as this shit keeps getting bigger." "It's all part of the way this system works," Aidan agrees. "There are things that are nice about it - I got to go to the dentist for the first time in ten years. I got to buy a new pair of shoes, I can pay off some of my student loan." I make the inevitable point that they are all far too hard on themselves, whipping themselves for the slightest infringement of their ultra-strict code of ethics. I mean, isn't it important and exciting that a group like Godspeed are in the limelight at all? A group that can actually initiate some debate, promote views that aren't often heard in the mainstream? A chance encounter with their music could alter the direction of someone's life. Efrim nods, then shrugs his shoulders. "I swear to God there was some point maybe two years ago before all this shit started there would be shows in spaces we liked in Montreal where it wasn't great it wasn't like everything had come true, but there was, like, a glimmer. A little window would open a millimetre, you know? And it was enough you'd lie in bed and you'd be hammered and you'd think that little window is going to open a bit more and a bit more some thing that you can't define. You can't name it - something that would mean that life wasn't shit - I don't even see that glimmer in the space between the window and the window frame anymore - you don't get that glimpse. I don't know if that makes any sense. It's important to question these things and if you question them then you end up bringing up all the down points, right? So then you end up... Jeez! And you feel like you're in high school again going, 'Life stinks, man!' Do you understand what I'm saying? If you're actually asking these things, trying to figure this shit out, then these are the points you're going to bring up - what's wrong - you're not going to bring up what's good. We know what's good about where we're at - it's just not enough and the next stop is scary 'cause it's like - what is the next thing?" "The next thing is to stop fighting so much," Aidan cracks. But Efrim continues, unfazed: "It's like screaming through traffic, like there's someone across the street and all these cars going by and all you're trying to scream is 'What the fuck?' There are nine people in this band, so if you end up with seven of them in a room everything gets reduced. No one can say anything because there's a lot of difference of opinion here and between ourselves we're too chicken-shit to hammer out that shit - right? Maybe that would be valuable - to hammer out that shit between ourselves and let someone document that - maybe that would make sense... here you're just scratching the surface." "We've yet to elect our minister of culture," Aidan quips. "What should come out of this is that we're a bunch of... uh... just trying our best..." "You see now we're talking about the process instead of just letting it happen," despairs Efrim, shaking his head. "There's no good way to get anything across or to walk away with anything good from 99 per cent of the magazines that are out there - it's impossible, like getting across to people who believe that Budweiser commercials can have some kind of value as art. You can't do it, so it doesn't happen - especially if you're just this little weird-ass page in the middle of one of these magazines and we're like, 'We don't know what we're doing and this is all fucked', and you're between an ad and an interview with I don't know who - some other fuckin' band who are talking about how they got a record coming out in the spring and they're just 'doing it for the kids' or some variation of that..." But surely their suspicious attitude towards the media, their mysterious photos and reluctance to talk make it easier to cast the group as a gimmick or to caricature them as 'that weird group'. You get the drift: they're so awkward, just grumpy guys playing music. Efrim laughs "Yeah - it's just like being in high school again and everything that's going on all around you is all fuck-wads who think that you're a complete fucking jerk-off or whatever, that you and all your friends are freaks. Why would you worry? Do you know what l'm saying? Maybe every now and then you'll corner someone like the prom queen when she's drunk and she'll confess some dark secrets to you and you'll think that that makes some kind of sense, but the next day everything's back to normal - it just never ends. You never leave high school - we're still there." "Do you know what I really think?" he blurts, "my own opinion? I think time is running short. I think time is running short. I think there are forces of evil in the world. I think that global capitalism is just, like, one inch away from being everywhere. I think now is not the time to be frittering away playing in a silly-assed post-rock band. I think everything you do in the face of this is inadequate." Everything? "Yeah!" he exclaims. "Which is good, it's all good, it's good to make feeble attempts, right? I think that's what they are. It's like throwing yourself up against a big fucking wall and the wall is just getting bigger and bigger..." You really think it's as hopeless as that? "That's not hopeless!" he shouts. "It's beautiful. It's beautiful that people try to do it. It's beautiful that people exist..." Such romantic pessimism haunts the works of Godspeed. Their art is essentially tragic in the sense that Schopenhauer described in The World As Will And Representation: "What gives all that is tragic, whatever its form, a characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation." Or to quote Efrim's other group A Silver Mount Zion: "The world is sickSICK, so kiss me quick." They may be elegising a dead flag, but essentially they're still singing the blues. I ask Efrim if he thinks creating art in the face of the inevitable is a conceit, some sort of indulgence? He nods: "I think believing that the creation of art alone is going to lead to any sort of solution is a conceit, yes. Placing that as some kind of resistance in the year 2000 in the Western world is a conceit, yes." But don't people need access to alternative sources of information? "Sure they do," Bruce agrees, "but what sort of alternative information are we offering?" Well, now's your chance. You tell me. "Well, we can't talk about actual issues, no one agrees on anything. We can't perform that task... we couldn't. That's part of the problem, you see?" "Can I just say something?" pleads Efrim, eager to clarify his point just as the final drones of Fly Pan Am's set signals the end of the interview. "I wasn't describing a hopeless situation at all. I think it's good that people do that. When l'm saying that these are feeble acts, I'm not saying thot we're all gonna fucking die tomorrow. I'm just saying... I know there's stuff like direct action but that's not what we're doing. We're on a six-foot stage going 'Wah wah wah'."

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Interview in OOR, 13 January 2001, by Menno Visser

First rip all the adverts out of this OOR. The Canadian postrock-squatter collective Godspeeed You Black Emperor! has a real problem with advertising multinationals. '"All of our squatter friends in Holland are going to make fun of us when they see we're in a glossy magazine. Up until now we've tried to stay out of that world." Too bad for them, seeing as how the Dutch critics en masse nominated their compelling, pastoral latest album Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas To Heaven! as one of the best releases of 2000 when it was time to draw up their lists at the end of last year. [end of preface] Big mistake. The well-meaning effort to show the band what OOR is all about was hardly appreciated. Way too many adverts and a totally lame band (U2) on the cover. Even the glowing praise in the Elftal highlights feature and their standing in the Moordlijst top 20 won't change their mind. Well, what to expect when you consider the fact that they package their album in environmentally-friendly recycled cardboard that reeks of Anger a mile away. The guy from the label had warned to tread lightly ... Let's start with the facts. GYBE! was founded seven years ago by guitarist Efrim Menuck and bassist Mauro Denzzente (sic). The band name is a translation of Buraku Empororu, the first and least successful film by Japanese director Mitsuo Yanagimachi, a vague black and white film about a Japanese scooter gang. The first Godspeed release, the cassette All Lights Fucked On the Hairy Drooling Amp, was limited to 33. Somewhat easier to find was the vinyl release f#a#oo, which the American indie label Kranky released (with several minor changes) in 1998. Last year saw the release of the mini-album Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada. According to the band's philosophy, the music is far more important than the members of the group. The collective supersedes the individual and the line-up continually changes. This also means no posed group photos, preferably no interviews, but in the event of one absolutely no personal questions are permitted. And including last names is an offence punishable by death. All intended to minimise the distance between listener and music. Luckily nowadays there's the internet, and after a bit of searching you find out that the group currently consists of two guitarists (Efrim Menuck and Roger Tellier Craig), two drummers (Bruce Caudron and Aidean Girt), two bassists (Mauro Denzzente and Thierry Amar), a cellist (Norsola Johnson), a violist (Sophie Trudeau) and tape master David Bryant. Legend has it that the squatter's collective resides in an abandoned train yard in Montreal's Mile End district . Back to reality. Shortly before the last of four sold-out concerts in London at the old Scala movie theatre, the band agrees to a rare (sic) interview. Guitarits Efrim, without a doubt the leader of the group, takes drummer Aidan and two other members he neglects to introduce, but they remain silent the entire time anyway, to a nearby Ethiopian restaurant. The whole thing seems like a kidnapping. Outside the club, a long line has formed hours earlier with people hoping to wrangle a ticket to the sold-out gig. Interesting: nobody calls out as the band walks past. Then again, nobody knows what they look like thanks to the moratorium on group photos and the dimly lit performances. Last night the band gave the audience their money's worth for the third time in a row with a two-hour long selection from their catalogue of intense, instrumental post-rock, enhanced by grainy films projected above the stage. Although they are known for playing the louder passages at ear-splitting levels, earplugs proved unnecessary. Their music might appeal to the average fans of Dead Can Dance, Mogwai, early Mercury Rev, today's Radiohead and, yes, Wagner; that is, if they only knew about it. And while it may look improvised, one of the band members has scribbled nine copies of the passages planned for tonight's performance on the same smelly recycled rough cardboard. Remember, copy machines all too often bear the mark of Xerox, a multinational. -Do you play different sets each night? -"Yeah" Efrim answers. "A lot of fans come to all four shows, so. But we usually start and finish with the same numbers. Bla, bla, bla." He makes it clear that the interview is not officially underway. This is not promising. In the restaurant, Efrim insists on sitting in the smoking section, and he doesn't have a problem with ordering a non-vegetarian meal. Speaking of principles. The question and answer session can begin once the microphone has been skilfully hidden under a stack of napkins. This is written into their contract, this can't look like an interview. Efrim takes charge of answering the questions, with Aidan adding a cynical comment every now and then. The atmosphere is one of forced relaxation. The band actually has a hidden agenda: although they agree to an interview, Efrim chooses his words with painstaking precision to avoid giving any clear answer. Let the cat and mouse game begin. OOR - "How would you describe your music?" GYBE - "That's not our role, that's what music journalists are supposed to do." O - "Some might describe it as depressing." G - "Would that be happy people, who claim our music sounds depressing?" O - "Have you by any chance heard the latest Radiohead album, Kid A?" G - "Radiohead is nothing but a bunch of hypocrites and liars. They are crazy enough to think that everything they say is taken seriously, despite the fact that they belong to a multinational. You know, it's not that one person writes all our music. There are nine of us in the band and we're influenced more by non-musical things in our lives than anything musical. Sometimes three or four members write the songs, but the material always takes shape the same way when all of us get together. It's an organic process." O - "How do you discuss your music?" G - "Sometimes we have to draw diagrams to indicate which part we mean. Sometimes it takes five minutes to e