The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Godspeed You! Black Emperor · three tracks on one CD · Kranky, Chicago · about 63 minutes
Mode
Instrumental rock as elegy; three long movements in which recorded speech is answered by an ensemble that rises
Mythos
The end of the world and what survives it: a city burning, the end preached in the street, and providence answered by continuance
Phase
Three tracks of about sixteen, eighteen and twenty-nine minutes; a ruin described, a descent into the street and its long rise, and a last movement that climbs twice, falls silent and does not close
Presentation
Album; three tracks on one CD, about sixty-three minutes, reworked from an LP issued the year before; no singer, no lyric, one spoken monologue
Register
Drone, western guitar, chamber lament, rock crescendo, noise and tape; everything grave and in a minor key
Scale
A late city as a machine running down, heard through a few documents: a flat voice, trains, a preacher on a Vancouver street, a stranger
Governing Proposition
A rock ensemble with strings and no singer lets a ruined city speak only through documents, a flat voice over a drone, trains, a street preacher, a stranger, and answers them with a lament that gathers player by player into a crowd. The record holds that a collapse no one inside it can narrate may still be mourned without words, and that the answer to an ending is not rescue but continuance.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with a low drone and a voice. The voice is flat, as if reading the news or the weather, and what it reads is the end of a city: “the car’s on fire”, the sewers flooded, people taking their own lives, the machine bleeding. Nothing is sung, and nothing will be. These are the only words on the record spoken from inside the ensemble, and everything that follows answers them in music. The monologue does not explain the ruin it describes. It reports it, at the pitch of overheard speech, and the drone beneath it neither rises nor resolves.
The architecture is three tracks, each a single piece divided into titled sections. The Dead Flag Blues runs about sixteen and a half minutes, East Hastings about eighteen, and Providence about twenty-nine, nearly half the record; the whole runs about sixty-three. Kranky issued it on CD in Chicago in 1998. The material had appeared the year before on an LP from Constellation in Montreal, in a different form, and the CD reorganised and extended it into three movements. It is the makers’ own completed form, made within a year of the first, and the form in which the record has been heard since.
The ensemble is a rock band enlarged: guitars, basses and drums, with strings, and with tape and field recordings worked into the music as structure. There is no singer, no verse and no chorus. The method is fixed in the first minutes and kept to the end: a document of the ruined city, a voice or a sound recorded in the world, answered by a lament that rises. Without the monologue the lament would have no city to mourn; without the lament the monologue would be only a report. The record is built in the space between the two.
Movement II
The first movement’s middle is built on a recording of trains, laid under the music. The machine of the monologue is heard here, not described: weight and motion, with no one at the controls. Then The Cowboy, a guitar in the manner of Morricone’s western scores, plays the lone figure of those landscapes walking through the ruin, the idiom furthest from the rest of the record and one that fits it exactly. The movement closes in a lament, strings and guitar over a slow pulse, and the grief the voice withheld is given to the instruments.
The tape is the record’s second voice. The trains here, and the preacher and the stranger who open the movements to come, are placed as structural events, each the document a passage answers, never decoration laid over a finished track. Set as songs, the same matter would turn these voices into a singer’s opinions. Left as recordings, they are evidence found in the ruin, and the music around them can mourn without claiming to explain. The making is exact where this matters: the speaking voice sits at the level of overheard speech, and the entries of the players are timed to it.
What the record brings into the open is first of all a mood, and the mood is exact: the late city as a machine running down, with the poor left in its streets. It is harder to say what it discloses beyond that. The images of the monologue, fire, flood and a bleeding machine, are the common stock of apocalypse, and the record never says what failed, or for whom. Its strength and its limit are one choice. A wordless record can make a condition felt with great precision; it cannot argue it, and this one does not try.
Movement III
The second movement names a street. East Hastings Street in Vancouver is the spine of the Downtown Eastside, the poorest district in Canada, and the movement opens with a drone and the recorded voice of a street preacher announcing the end. The street is given its own voice, not a singer’s account of it. Here the record comes nearest to naming the condition it mourns, and it names it as it names everything, by a title and a found voice. The social fact is brought into the open, set down, and left unexplained.
Then The Sad Mafioso. A single figure of tremolo guitar and violin is repeated, and players enter one by one, guitars, strings, basses, drums, until the figure has become a crowd. Density carries the rise, not harmony; the chords hardly move. The approach and the rise run some twelve minutes, and they cannot be shortened, because the length is the argument: cut, the rise would become a gesture. It is the only statement of collective rising the record makes, and it is made without a word. At its height the room seems to tilt.
The movement does not end at its height. It falls into Drugs in Tokyo and Black Helicopter, a passage of drone and noise that restates the dread the preacher had already set and adds a threat of surveillance the record does not develop; it is the movement’s slack. Four years after the CD, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) set the crescendo over the empty London its hero walks through. The apocalypse the record had imagined was made literal by another medium, and the passage became, for an audience far wider than its own, the sound of an ending.
Movement IV
The third movement is titled for divine care, and it holds nearly half the record. It opens with another found voice and moves through long sections, among them Dead Metheny, toward two more climbs. The second breaks into a gallop, Kicking Horse on Brokenhill, the most driven music on the record. The opening monologue and this gallop stand at the two ends of the record and keep one law: the city described in a flat voice, and the city answering in force. Between them lies everything the ensemble can do, from drone to western guitar to chamber lament.
Then the record slows. String Loop Manufactured During Downpour, recorded in rain as its title says, is weather after the end, and the loop runs on past its purpose. A long silence follows before the last passage, a convention rather than a requirement of this form. Here the build and release, used once more, becomes in parts a container rather than an instrument. The third movement is the most generous on the record and the least strict, and its length is the one length on the record not wholly compelled.
The myth is completed here. The archetype is the end of the world and what survives it, and the three movements give its terms: the ruin described, the end preached in the street, and providence. The answer to that last word is not rescue or resurrection. It is continuance, a loop that will not stop and the sign for the endless at the close of the title. The particulars stay particular, a Vancouver street, trains, real voices, but they remain documents. No one in the record is made to bear the archetype, and much of its imagery of ruin is borrowed from the common stock of Revelation.
Movement V
The record stands in a line of rock that had turned against the song. Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991) had dissolved it; Slint’s Spiderland (1991) had made the slow build a form; Simon Reynolds named the territory post-rock in 1994; Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) and Mogwai’s Young Team (1997) were its neighbours. Outside rock, Gavin Bryars’s Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (composed 1971, issued 1975) had made a recorded vagrant’s voice the centre of an elegy, and Morricone and Reich lent the western and the slow change. What is new is the synthesis, and the political and apocalyptic frame given to a wordless rock ensemble.
Measured from rock, the departure is near total, and it was made by an unknown collective with nothing to lose but the chance of being heard. Its reach followed. The crescendo became the grammar of a genre, and the slow-build instrumental bands of the next decade took it up; Constellation became a label of the Montreal scene; the apocalyptic instrumental became a language of film and television. The credit is shared with Slint and Mogwai, and much of the band’s reach runs through Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000), which followed the Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada EP (1999). A hiatus from 2003 ended in 2010, and ’Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! won the Polaris Prize in 2013.
Twenty-eight years on, the recording survives whole. Strings, guitars, drums and tape carry no production date, and the record’s standing rose through the years the band was silent. Its surface belongs to its moment, the millennial dread of burning cars and suicides, but the decades since have supplied a referent, and “the machine is bleeding” is now heard as prophecy. What holds the record below the summit is what a wordless record cannot hold: the orders it names are titles and single documents, consciousness is a flat voice, and the family, love and labour are absent. Within those limits it is complete, and it does not end.
Act III · The Twelve
Length is not the charge, and most of this length is compelled. A crescendo is an argument made of time: the rise of The Sad Mafioso cannot be shortened without becoming a gesture. The monologue is required, since without it the lament has no city to mourn, and the trains, the preacher and the voice that opens Providence are each the document a movement answers. But the subtractive test bites in three places, and together they hold the figure: Black Helicopter restates the dread the preacher has set, the string loop of Providence runs past its purpose, and the long silence before the last passage is convention. The LP of the year before shows the form was revisable, one selection of at least two.
Score: 7.9 / 10
What the record discloses is mostly a mood, and the mood is exact: the late city as a machine running down, with the poor left in its streets. Some of it can be stated. The monologue’s burning cars and flooded sewers, and “the machine is bleeding”, name the system as a dying body its inhabitants are inside. The second movement’s title points at a real place, Canada’s poorest district, and gives the street its own voice in a preacher of the end times. That brings a social condition into the open, but by a title and a found voice, not by articulation, and the record never says what failed, or for whom.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Elevation is the record’s native element, cold and warm, and its height is at the top of the medium. The cold opens it: a low drone and a flat voice describing the end of a city, “the car’s on fire”, in the register of a weather report. Grief comes in the lament that closes the first movement. Grandeur and terror come together in The Sad Mafioso, where a figure of tremolo guitar and violin is repeated, thickened and driven until the room seems to tilt, among the summit moments of its tradition. Providence climbs twice more, the second time into a gallop. Frequency holds the figure well below the height: four or five summits in sixty-three minutes, with long approaches, noise and a silence between.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One archetype is built, not only evoked: the end of the world, and what survives it. The titles carry its terms, from the ruin of The Dead Flag Blues to a street where the end is preached to providence, the old word for divine care, and the record answers that word with continuance, not resurrection: the endless sign that closes its title. The particular stays particular: a named street in Vancouver, trains, a real preacher, a passer-by. What holds the axis is that the figures are documents, not persons. No one is made to bear the archetype, and much of the imagery of ruin is the common stock of Revelation.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Measured from rock, the departure is near total: no song, no singer, no verse or chorus, movements of up to twenty-nine minutes, strings inside a guitar band, and found voices in place of lyrics. The stake was small in capital, as it is for any unknown group, and a turn this complete is not discounted for coming before there was a career to risk. What holds it below the top is the partly proven path: Talk Talk had dissolved the rock song, Slint had made the slow build a form, Bryars had set a found voice at the centre of an elegy. What is new is the synthesis, and the apocalyptic and political frame given to a wordless rock ensemble.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Change the form and the record loses nearly all it knows. Its subject is a collapse no one in it can narrate, and its form is wordless music that admits speech only as documents: set as songs, the voices would become a singer’s opinions; here they are evidence found in the ruin. The sequence argues. The first movement describes the ruin, the second goes down into the street and hears the end preached, and the third, titled for providence, climbs, falls silent and ends in a loop, refusing an ending because the condition has none. The crescendo is the second instrument. What holds the figure is the third movement, where the build and release, used again, becomes in parts a container and the length is not wholly compelled.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Twenty-eight years supply evidence, not promise. The record has held its place as a founding document of its genre, through a seven-year hiatus during which its standing rose, and into film, where its crescendo became the sound of an ending. The formal yield shows on return: the field recordings, the layering of strings and guitars and the slow changes inside passages that seem static reward close listening, and much is buried in the mix on purpose. The limits hold the figure. The return is shown more in listening than in study, and the literature of formal analysis is thin beside the reach; part of the semantic yield is projection, since a wordless record invites each listener’s own apocalypse.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is its own tradition, the rock of the 1990s that had turned against the song. The intrinsic force is a reorganisation of what that tradition could carry: an orchestral collective for the quartet, the found voice for the singer, the movement for the track, and a political charge carried without words. What holds the axis is the shape of the reach: the field is narrow, the credit is shared with Slint and Mogwai, and much of the band’s reach runs through the next album. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the crescendo became the genre’s grammar, the slow-build instrumental bands of the next decade followed it, Constellation rose as a label of the Montreal scene, and 28 Days Later fixed the apocalyptic instrumental in film.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Survival is weighed over twenty-eight years. The form is whole: nothing of the recording is lost. The fabric bears time: strings, guitars, drums and tape carry no production date, as the programmed rhythms of their year do, and the monologue’s millennial dread has found its referent in the decades since. Presence has been continuous in its field, through a seven-year hiatus in which the record’s standing rose, and into a second life after the band’s return in 2010. Presence is also the limit: it survives in a tradition, not across the culture, level with films of its year such as The Thin Red Line and far below what has lasted centuries.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, load-bearing where the record needs it most. The arrangement of the crescendo is the chief making: entries staggered across guitars, strings, basses and drums so that density, not harmony, carries the rise, and the drums lock rather than clutter. The tape is placed exactly: trains, preacher and the voice that opens Providence enter as structural events, and the monologue sits over the drone at the level of overheard speech. The western guitar of The Cowboy and the closing lament of the first movement are precisely voiced. The faults hold the figure, and the first falls where the record is built to arrive: loud passages murky enough to blur the climaxes, playing at times rough, and a few minor chords held long.
Score: 8.5 / 10
One law governs the record: the documentary voice of a ruined city, answered by a lament that rises. The two most distant elements obey it: the flat spoken vision that opens the record and the gallop of Kicking Horse on Brokenhill are the law at its two ends, the city described and the city answering. The western guitar of The Cowboy, furthest in idiom, obeys it as the lone figure in the ruined landscape, and the string loop recorded during a downpour as weather after the end. Two things hold the figure: Black Helicopter strains the law with a threat the record does not develop, and the range is bounded, everything grave, with no comedy and no small tenderness.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no further discount for the album form. Present are the city and the state, as a machine; the poor and the street, in East Hastings; the sacred, in the preacher and in Providence; technology and power, in the trains and the black helicopter; the natural order, as weather after the end; and history, as an ending. One condition joins them, the dying system and those left inside it. What holds the figure here is that nearly every order is a title or a single document, glimpsed rather than held: consciousness appears only as the monologue’s flat witness, and the family, love and labour are absent.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve at 8.7, then The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.6. A departure from rock that is near total, made by an unknown collective; height at the top of the medium, cold in the opening voice and grand in the long crescendo of East Hastings; and a wordless form that admits speech only as documents found in the ruin.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.4: the city and the state, the street, the sacred, technology and power, weather and history are present under one condition, but nearly each is a title or a single document, consciousness is held only in the monologue’s flat witness, and the family, love and labour are absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable and The Unconcealment at 7.9: three passages could be shortened or cut from a form the makers had already revised, and the record renders a mood with great exactness and names its social condition by a title and a found voice, without articulating it.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.5, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Swerve at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Imperishable at 8.4, The Archetypal Deep at 8.2, Pressure on Tradition at 8.0 and The Unconcealment at 7.9 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.9, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.4. Four of the five summit conditions are met, and the aggregate of 8.2 holds the record in Tier IV.
Basis · the album as released on CD by Kranky in Chicago in 1998, three tracks in sequence, The Dead Flag Blues, East Hastings and Providence, about sixty-three minutes, judged from knowledge of the recording and its documented history; no recording, score or sleeve was in hand. The CD is the unit: it is the makers’ own reworking, within a year, of material first issued on LP by Constellation in Montreal in 1997, and the form in which the record has been heard since. The LP differs substantially and is not judged; it is used only as evidence that the makers treated the form as revisable. The record prints the band’s name as Godspeed You Black Emperor!; the page uses the form the band took later. There is no sung lyric. Two fragments of the spoken monologue are quoted, four words each, in wording that is certain; the other voices are described, not quoted. Section titles within the tracks are given in short form, and their exact placement is not stated. Track lengths are given only roughly. Facts that could not be verified, among them the players and their instruments, the speaker of the monologue, the identities of the recorded voices, and the edition, packaging, content and running time of the LP, are not given.