F♯A♯∞, lest we forget....

I recently filled up 8gb on my new phone, and threw in some albums I have previously absolutely adored but haven't listened too for years. In this case, gotta be 7 or 8 years, at least...

Godspeed You Black Emperor were one of the bands that dragged post-rock past Slint-invented, Mogwai-aped dynamics, and evolved it into a heavily political narrative constructed from dark drones, spoken word and epic sonic landscapes. At the time, this shit was really pushing the envelope, and it's all too easy to forget that in hindsight. But the heartbreaking violin, plaintive marching drums and mournful, reverbed guitars still evoke the same bleak post-war-post-society melancholy as they did at the time, and in 2009 this record sounds every bit as angry and sad and fierce and fresh as it did eleven years ago in 1998.



I didn't put it there, but it's up for download on mediafire, like everything else these days. If you wanna buy it, the artwork is characteristically beautiful, so it's worth buying on a physical format, like most Constellation releases. My CD of this is in the very small pile that I'm not planning to get rid of before the removable media apocalypse.

But that kind of apocalypse is a bit crap compared to the doom-laden prospects in F#A#∞. Maybe they should have been asked to do the soundtrack for the forthcoming movie of The Road. I'm worried Nick Cave's score is gonna be a bit too... I dunno. Staged, maybe.