DCP 49-09

Godspeed You! Black Emperor “We Drift Like Worried Fire (Detail)”

I feel like a horrible butcher for bringing this down to just a five minute excerpt, but I can’t justify giving away a 20 minute piece of music that is nearly one half of an album. If you like what you hear, please buy this record and listen to the composition in its entirety.

I never liked that Godspeed relied on using bits of speech on their older records. In some cases it was a nice bit of texture, but it too often felt like the band was forcing contextual parameters on music that was otherwise abstract. They’ve almost entirely tossed that out on their new record, and the compositions are better for it. You don’t need any sort of nudging to get sucked into the world of this music, it’s obvious from the start that they’re evoking a desolate landscape. From there, it’s up to interpretation. It makes sense to hear this as a representation of a world after every system fails us, or perhaps as an escape from a spoiled, crumbling society. What I get out of this, particularly in the valleys of “Worried Fire,” is the feeling of being alone in a vast empty space. And it’s a bit of freedom, yes, but for me, it’s even more a sense of loneliness and vulnerability. As if the cosmos is bearing down upon me, like a boot about to come down to carelessly crush a bug on the ground.

Buy it from Amazon.