Drone Rock Fills 'Sco Sunday

Godspeed You Black Emperor! to Play The 'Sco

With a name borrowed from a Tokyo motorcycle gang, Montreal drone-rockers Godspeed You Black Emperor! never superfluously indulge in the franglais vocabulary that lends itself to the title of their new release Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas To Heaven. (October 2000). Their songs contain no lyrics and the band is notoriously press-shy.

Approached by Face Magazine, one of the band's two guitarists, Efrim, said, "If I want to have an awkward conversation with people about things I hold to be self-evident, I'll go to my parents." Efrim, like most of the other eight members, lists only his first name in album credits.

"There is only so much to say about the often mundane reality of playing in a rock band," Efrim offered to KindaMuzik as an explanation for the band's disinterest in having their words captured and interpreted by the media. Fortunately, GYBE! never seemed to tire of sharing their musical creations, which Effrim has described as "textural washes of sound without clumsy attempts by some vocalist to fix a literal context with poorly written lyrics."

GYBE!, consisting of two bassists, two guitarists, two drummers, a cellist and a violinist, produce a dynamic sound that can range from a delicately eerie symphony to a bleakly apocalyptic and violence-tainted rant. Often referred to as minimalist or orchestral rock, the band's music battles its enemies (government, capitalism, fashion, media, business) with melancholic songs that recycle emotions relentlessly.

The songs begin quietly, slide through art-rock transitions, come to an atomic climax and finally simmer down to a warm afterglow. The effect is somewhat hallucinatory, as a light but haunting melody rolls effortlessly over eighth note patterns plucked by a faint guitar, a sound sometimes layered with recorded voices (like that of a preacher gone mad or an anti-government poet), that deliver their message with an air of desolation.

Since 1994, the band has released four albums: 33 copies of a tape called All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling, an LP entitled f#a#€, the EP Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada and finally this year's LevezŠ. The new record has been praised for the sharper studio skills it displays, complete with howling guitars and powerful rhythms.

Though the band doesn't believe in a "natural" sound, they always record their pieces live, in the hopes of translating, as Efrim has described, "the excitement and energy of a bunch of folks playing music together in a room to document a real event, a time and place that you can imagine in your head, mistakes and all, so you can hear a chair creak or someone cough or the violin player breathing nervously."

More than anything, GYBE! communicates the desperation of a decaying West in the form of devastatingly melancholic elegies. The band announced before a London performance in May that their music is about "the devil in the world," and how it is turning "everything into Disneyland." They dedicated the performance to "quiet refusals, to loud refusalsŠto carpenters, nurses, schizophrenics, drug addicts, boys kissing boysŠto everyone who's trying to live freeŠto every prisoner in the world."

Opening for GYBE! is Philadelphia's Bardo Pond, who build a wall of noise with their abstract expressionist rock. They are a cross between early Sonic Youth and the Grateful Dead, though always original and spontaneous. Their live performances are full of improvisation, sometimes combining saxophone, drum loops and synthesizers.

Solid touring for two years has given GYBE! live performances an edge that stimulates the audience's sensibilities. The band will bring their thoughtful rock to the 'Sco on Sunday October 8th. Doors open at 10 pm and tickets are $4 for students.