What gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall?

Words by Davide Battocletti

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a ten-or-more person art ensemble from Montreal who go so much further beyond their sound. With one of the most non linear band lineups you can imagine, comprised of multiple guitarists, drummers and bassists, elements of jazz and orchestral music, tape loop workers and live film projectionists, the group is renowned for promoting an anti-establishment, anti-capitalist and anarchist stance through their actions and their music.

For 30 years now the group’s massive compositions of sonic protest have established a new and chillingly expressive way of berating the dismal condition of modern society: lengthy, obsessive, instrumental post-rock movements that portray a fascinatingly harrowing and dystopian reality, while condemning its misery and struggling to keep a hold of hope, the only weapon that we have. A legacy of discussing and bringing awareness to geopolitical and climate issues, accusing specific instances of abuse of power, toxic beliefs of the post industrial world and even criticising the greedy and performative practices of the music industry.

NO TITLE AS OF 13th FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD is Godspeed’s latest release, partnered perfectly with longstanding local experimental label Constellation Records, spawned from the band’s endeavour of righteous, politically-involved music being confronted with the gruesome happenings in the Middle East. Never before in their seven previous albums has the band been so unmediated about the stance and intentions that they’re representing through their sound, alongside chilling imagery in their artwork from the landscape of the warzone.

Its brutal honesty hits the second you finish reading its title and permeates throughout the entire listen. Whether it’s the broken melody wailed by the strings and guitar on the opening “SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS”, the oppressive and marching motif of “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD”, or the petrifying arabic riffs that haunt “PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS”, the band show us how words and prayers have become stale, letting their eerie hurricane of a sound do all the talking. It’s a weary cry for help, at times violent and extremely descriptive, condemning the inhumanity, viciousness and futility of bloodshed. It’s all the sounds of a massacre looming on each other into a brief moment of dreary and brooding silence. 

NO TITLE is the peak of Godspeed’s moral and compassionate need to spread awareness and a milestone for activist music. It’s a statement on art’s venture to make us reflect on our reality and not make us abstracted from it by engaging in trivialities. 

Although it’s probably not going to be the usual pleasant experience of your normal listening habits or as far as song length and tropes that you’re used to goes. It will enhance a certain range of emotions that are vital for our grasp on the reality that surrounds us, but that we as humans are designed to find uncomfortable. But keep in mind, in all the clustering darkness that Godspeed You! Black Emperor portray with their music, there’s a much bigger, yet harder to spot, stubborn light of hope that is the underlying true meaning of their compositions. 

“what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall?
what context? what broken melody?
and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.
the sun setting above beds of ash
while we sat together, arguing.
the old world order barely pretended to care.
this new century will be crueler still.”

GY!BE Album Footnotes

The number in the title refers to the Palestinian deaths on the Gaza strip since October 2023, a number that has now reached more than 60.000, if not plenty more due to the difficulty of reporting them, not to mention all the consequences of injuries, famine and illnesses that we don’t know of and the irreversible damage done to the country, its integrity and the population’s mental fortitude as a whole. 

The powers that be who are pulling the strings have shown time and time again that they are driven solely by greed, hate and prejudice. The future is uncertain, no bygone detail of war shall ever be forgotten, and all we have now – as evidenced in Godspeed You!’s perennial message – is HOPE.