G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END (CD)

GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times, like only this inimitable and venerable ensemble can forge. As the heretical impudence of the anarcho-punk 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, noisedrenched 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.

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 awardwinning indie producer (and co-founder of The Besnard Lakes) who works with Godspeed for the first time on this recording.

Tracklisting

1. 12a
2. A Military Alphabet (five eyes all blind) (4521.0kHz 6730.0kHz
3. 4109.09kHz)
4. Job’s Lament
5. First of the Last Glaciers
6. where we
7. break how we shine (ROCKETS FOR MARY)
8. 10a 
9. Fire at Static Valley
10. 12b 
11. “GOVERNMENT CAME” (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 kHz)
12. Cliffs Gaze
13. cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise
14. ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE
15. 10b
16. OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)