Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Colston Hall in Bristol - Live Music Review
Posted on: 2015-10-25
Our rating:
The intensity of the gig was like nothing I?ve experienced before, every track challenging and immersing the packed audience at Colston Hall. To a fan like myself, songs were recognisable but simultaneously hard to differentiate.
Live at Colston Hall October 23rd 2015 to kick off Simple Things Festival.
Where do you start with a band like Godspeed You! Black Emperor? A year ago, minus a day, I was faced with the same blend of excitement and anticipation at seeing equally revered ‘post-rock’ flag bearers Mogwai headlining Saturday night of Simple Things 2014. With Mogwai though, you knew how they’d be, songs are generally standard song lengths, Braithwaite and co acknowledge their audience and they play instantly recognisable tracks from across their back catalogue. They are challengingly intense but you know what you’re in for. Godspeed…on the other hand, are another kettle of fish entirely. Songs range anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes in length, none of the 9 members (8 of whom are actually on stage) really interact with the audience, least of all enigmatic founding member Efrim Menuck and vast sections of their songs are the made up of static feedback, industrial drones and helicopter rotors. Live, it simply should not work!
Somehow though, it does. In quite spectacular fashion. On all of their five albums, with perhaps the exception of 2002’s slightly less ‘out there’ Yanqui U.X.O., Godspeed… slowly build layer upon layer of sound, gradually filling out their compositions until you’re bludgeoned with a wall of sound. It’s like one of the great masters slowly applying layers of paint to a canvas, it may start off looking like an obscure mess and it may take a long time to see the end result but once it’s complete it’s a thing of rare beauty. Take the opening track from debut album F# A# ∞ as a prime example. End of the world doomsday poetry, slowly moving through various soundscapes into something startling and immense. The band started their set this way. One by one, members came on stage to a low fuzz drone. Double bass was added, almost inaudibly, then violin. Slowly guitars were picked up and softly strummed, cymbals gently stroked and before you knew it every audience member was being assaulted with an onslaught of noise.
Over the course of the next two hours there was no let up. The intensity of the gig was like nothing I’ve experienced before, every track challenging and immersing the packed audience at Colston Hall. To a fan like myself, songs were recognisable but simultaneously hard to differentiate, this was not a greatest hits tour, cranking out the favourites. To the uninitiated the set presented a continuous wall of sound, an audible maze to get lost in, especially when you add the grainy film projections, showing images from the sleeve notes of their albums, in to the mix. The effect of the music, twinned with these visuals, was almost hypnotic. Even Big Jeff stopped pogoing and stood swaying and gently nodding with the rest of us, eyes closed, in a trance-like reverie. There is no ambiguity with what Godspeed… do. This is a band that reward patience, you stick with it, all through the discordant drones, squeaks and feedback loops and the pay-off is huge. Looking around the stalls, it was clear that others felt it too, that tension that built through your body as those layers built upon one another before the inevitable joyous release as another one of those epic compositions came to a crescendo or another twinkling melody, played over interminable fuzz, dropped into the next crashing movement. Everyone in the audience got swept along on the same ride and yet it felt somehow deeply personal too.
Opening track Peasantry or 'Light! Inside of Light!' from this year’s Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress was a rock juggernaut. Played mid-set, at first it seemed a little more conventional than other tracks but soon morphed into something altogether more challenging and, ultimately, rewarding. The individual songs though are irrelevant. This was a set to be treated as an experience, one immense, individual movement. You don’t expect the cast of a play to break character halfway through the performance or the lead soprano to thank the audience after a particular aria and it is the same with Godspeed. You go to be entertained, yes, but more so to be challenged and taken on a journey. By the time the set was brought to a crashing close with Storm from standout album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, the whole of Colston Hall had been taken on that journey and were the richer for it.
5/5
Reviewed by Phil Spring (with thanks to Arun Sharma and Dan Mullender) for 365 Bristol - The Bristol website where local information matters
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Article by:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
