“Pick a side. Hang on. Love.”
Troxy was a grand yet cosy art-deco venue for a night of powerful music. Opting for a support that was truly off the beaten path, Tashi Dorji’s opening set was a spellbinding challenge for an audience that ought to have been prepared for one. Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s performance was a completely convincing argument for their swelling discography, extensive touring plans, and their continued relevance, years after inventing a genre that they want and need nothing to do with.
Words by Carl and Dobbin T, photography by Asha Sitraz – contact before any use.
Tashi Dorji
Who could possibly open for Godspeed You! Black Emperor? A swathe of bands have been inspired by them, but none of these come close to capturing their foreboding aura. You need an act whose gloomy aesthetic can prepare the audience for the coming storm. An acoustic guitarist who starts a timer when their set begins might just do the trick.
Tashi Dorji’s sound celebrates the timbre and incidental noise of the acoustic guitar. Tinny frequencies that are edited out of most recordings were abundant. Plectrum noise and misplaced harmonics became industrial percussive elements that Swans would be proud of. He was tuned to some esoteric sequence of letters from the early alphabet which would make even the most-midwest-emo guitarist squint.
His looped rhythms were hypnotic and locked-in, until he changed tack, and played against them in a counter rhythm, crossing a line that few looper enthusiasts cross. He had a big pedal board, but every sound was somehow true to the original signal. Even when the live sampling was contorted into pipe organ noise, some phantom of the original source felt present. His technique was learned yet disfigured, like watching a ballet dancer who had perfected hardcore two stepping. The sound was absolutely atmospheric, drifting between tranquil and unsettling, and never far from either.
All very interesting, but did it fit the bill? It put a lot of his studio work into context, and plenty were enchanted. The ending noise and drone segment was stellar, a sound that worked extremely well for me. Sadly, the audience were not enthralled. I was glad to be quite far forwards as many chatted through the performance. Interesting stuff but a tough sell for a support act.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Thanks to the culture of bootlegging that’s followed them, there’s a whole book of lore to learn about Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s live performances. This only increased our anticipation. Years of factoids were about to be put into practice, about how they’ll play unreleased material whenever possible, and how the (largely live-recorded) studio material would end up re-worked for the current tour. There would be film from archival sources projected and manipulated by experts. The whole thing would toe a mysterious line between the deliberate and the improvised. And, of course, no successful band can escape the ‘yoke’ of their early material. If I was a better person I wouldn’t have minded what they would play, but I’ll be damned, I wanted at least something from the first three LPs. We were not disappointed.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s mainstay opener “Hope Drone” began their set as a droned duet between the string players. The double bass throbbed like rumbling thunder, and the violin was bowed in tremors to beckon an approaching whirlwind. When the drummers joined, their cymbals were cracks of lightning. By now the projectors had warmed up, and the word “Hope” came scrawled across the images. A fairly natural pause led to the opener of their new record, “SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPOURS”. It’s a track whose major pentatonic melody could be sung by a children’s choir – occasionally, Godspeed You! Black Emperor reminds us there is still happiness in the world. “SUN…” is a sort of introduction of its own, so the first meaty track came as it subsided, and the tone became ambiguous. Visuals of grayscale clouds and lush forests accompanied “BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD” whose opening major seventh chords accelerated towards crescendo, which always declined harmonic resolution. Masterful – but it feels like a deliberately unfinished sentence.
Rays of sunlight and orange street lights accompany the uncertain ambience of “Fire at Static Valley”, the key interlude from G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!. What then followed was destructive fire for the trio of songs that end their new record: “BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL” through to “GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS”. Scenes of industrial machinery and forest fires give way to real-life fire as the projectionists took lighters to their slide reels; the music was sufficiently destructive to match. The more melodic crescendo of “GREY RUBBLE” bowed out for the softer “GREEN SHOOTS” ending. As the last of the new material on the setlist was done, it was clear that the new record is very good (though I was quite glad that “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” was left out of this set).
Continuing with their post 2020 material, ”First of the Last Glaciers” was next – one of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s catchiest tracks in recent years. A swirling buildup came awash with footage of blood red liquid and frosty mountains. Evocative scenes of protestors under attack from water cannons, underlining the themes of resistance, no doubts hoping to inspire a few attendees in turn. The visuals cut as the track did for a short break of tense ambience. A violin motif emerged, like a songbird in a war zone, accompanied by visuals of delicate jellyfish – not on our bingo cards. “Piss Crowns Are Trebled” developed into its morose grandeur. Having seen them play the whole of Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress on their 2012 tour (or “Behemoth” as it was known at the time), I was delighted to hear this amazing closer without suffering through the tedious drone sequence that comes before it.
Finally, it was time for what James Hatfield would call “old shit”. On this current tour, the final track the band plays seems to draw from their early era, and they choose a different piece each night (“BBF3” and “World Police and Friendly Fire” seem to be some of the choices). We were treated to “The Sad Mafioso”, better known as the middle part of “East Hastings” of the now legendary F#A#∞. Given the song’s link to London through its famous appearance in 28 Days Later, the choice was certainly on the nose. The incredible track had the most harrowing visual accompaniment: a panicked bird fight, a haunted old man, and a plane tumbling from the sky, turning in pirouettes through its disaster, only to meet peril once again as the reel looped once more. In the final lull before absolute collapse, the simple guitar melody was matched with equally sombre gang vocals. The developing ambience made the building shake for one last truly epic crescendo, ending with an evolving drone and visuals showing a gritty blur. Two members returned to the stage to tweak knobs until curfew, baiting a few audience members into thinking there was time for just one more “quick” song.
Bar some amp cut outs that occurred only at the bitter end of the set, the performance was flawless. It showcased a band whose music has always, and continues to be, the cutting edge of what can be done within the “rock band” format. We hope to see them again, and our pipedream is to hear something from Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (we’ve dismissed hopes of anything from Yanqui U.X.O., a record they’ve somewhat forgotten). And whilst such a personal yearning shouldn’t be relevant here, we’re dealing with a band with lore. Much of the fun of a story is wondering what is on the next page.
