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PO: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! (April 02, 2021)


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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

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58 minutes ago, wuhanclan said:

you're absolutely right there, thanks for the reminder!

No problem at all.

The writeup that Landlocked posted on their listing is pretty juicy.  Follows the same release format they've been doing (two "main" songs, ~20 minutes a piece, and then two ~6 minute drones on the 10") but field recordings are back on the menu, and I'm into that.  Plus, the 2 main tracks have been played live for a bit now and anyone lucky enough to catch them on their last few tours can probably attest to how good they are.

 

Full writeup:

 

Double vinyl edition is 180gLP + 10” pressed at Optimal (DE) in gatefold jacket on uncoated artboard with thermographic print, colour flood interior, artworked inner sleeves and DL card.
 

CD in custom mini-gatefold uncoated paperboard jacket with artworked inner sleeve.
 

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.
 

Thanks for listening. OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN. (R.I.P. D.H.)
 

TRACKLIST
12a [20:22]
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)

10a [5:58]
Fire at Static Valley

12b [19:48]
“GOVERNMENT CAME” (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 kHz) / Cliffs Gaze / cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE

10b [6:30]
OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)
 

Running time: 00:52:38

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2 minutes ago, wuhanclan said:

nice, love those long pieces by them. when i saw the track listing with 4 songs i thought great but then i recalled asunder was 4 tracks roughy 10 mins each. great to see they are reverting to the long piece format 

For sure.  Asunder was 40 minutes, and the last one was 44.  52 minutes is a nice little step up.

The best part about this announcement is that there's only 1 month of waiting.  Can't emphasize enough how grateful I am that this isn't a September or October release.

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10 minutes ago, MyEnemy said:

Please excuse me, and I haven’t kept up with any of the GY!BE LPs for the last 10 years, but is this supposed to be played 12”-10”-12”-10”? 
 

If so, that’s rad.

Technically, yeah.  Their first post-hiatus album was a 12" and a 7", and that's exactly how it's set up on streaming services.  Which is actually kind of convenient if you're in a pinch and need a Godspeed fix without the full experience of drone / interludes bundled in.

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2 minutes ago, Derek™ said:

Technically, yeah.  Their first post-hiatus album was a 12" and a 7", and that's exactly how it's set up on streaming services.  Which is actually kind of convenient if you're in a pinch and need a Godspeed fix without the full experience of drone / interludes bundled in.

 

2 minutes ago, Your Ex-Wife said:

They did the same thing a few albums ago except with a 7"

Sick. I fully fuck with that. Need to pick up the last few LPs.

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40 minutes ago, MyEnemy said:

Sick. I fully fuck with that. Need to pick up the last few LPs.

When you say you haven't kept up with their LPs in years... does that mean you haven't even listened to them, period?  Or just haven't picked them up physically?  I'd love to have all their post-hiatus stuff fresh and ready for a first listen.  So many people dismiss "new" Godspeed because it's not on the same scale as LYSF, but I think that's pretty cheap.  New material is killer in my opinion, even if the live versions that they workshop end up getting trimmed here and there for the studio cuts.

 

Their last 3 albums – soon to be 4 – are all released the same way.  Toured extensively for a few years, then finally committed to a proper studio recording.  Lots of people seem to scoff that it doesn't hit quite the same, but the inverse is common practice, isn't it?  Artist releases new album, you consume the studio version for months, then go see them perform it live and relish the extended sections or changed nuances.

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Wonder what's on this promo 10"...

"There will be advanced singles ahead of the album’s release. Instead, GS!YE has sent an advanced 10-inch to 100+ independent record stores and invites them “to share clips of this music spinning in their stores or homes or wherever they find themselves with a turntable, in isolation or otherwise.”

 

https://consequenceofsound.net/2021/03/godspeed-you-black-emperor-g_ds-pee-at-states-end/?new=true

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2 minutes ago, jmpatrick said:

Wonder what's on this promo 10"...

"There will be advanced singles ahead of the album’s release. Instead, GS!YE has sent an advanced 10-inch to 100+ independent record stores and invites them “to share clips of this music spinning in their stores or homes or wherever they find themselves with a turntable, in isolation or otherwise.”

 

https://consequenceofsound.net/2021/03/godspeed-you-black-emperor-g_ds-pee-at-states-end/?new=true

It's probably the 10" from the record

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16 minutes ago, duckydan said:

this is the album that 2021 needs

I was gonna' say that we needed it last year, given how bleak Godspeed's music can be.  F#A# is the perfect soundtrack for enforced curfews and empty drives through quarantined towns.  But the truth is that some of this new material has the band sounding more triumphant and melodic than they've sounded in years.  As foolishly optimistic as it may be, nothing would beat having 2021 follow suit and turn around for the better with the release of this new LP.

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