The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Godspeed You! Black Emperor · four tracks on four LP sides or two CDs · Constellation and Kranky · about 87 minutes
Mode
Instrumental rock as symphony; four long movements of slow crescendo, with field recordings set into the form
Mythos
Storm, static, sleep and heaven: a descent through weather and broadcast into night and memory, a lost beach and a fallen city, and the raised fist as prayer and antenna
Phase
Four sides of nineteen titled movements; the record begins at its summit, darkens through storm and static, rises again out of an old man’s memory, disperses, and climbs a last time
Presentation
Album; four tracks, one to each side of a double LP and two to each of two CDs, about eighty-seven minutes; no singer, no single, no lyric
Register
Guitars, basses, drums and strings from near silence to full force; drone and tremolo, a glockenspiel, a sung fragment and voices recorded in the street
Scale
A ruined public world heard through a few particular voices: a Los Angeles gas station, a Montreal street, a campsite, an old man’s beach
Governing Proposition
A rock ensemble with strings and no singer plays four sides of about twenty minutes each, in which a world named only by its titles and a few recorded voices, a city of cancer towers and world police and an old man’s lost beach, is answered by many players gathering slowly into one force. The wager of the record is that a hope it cannot state can be enacted in duration: that the long approach is the meaning, and that the raised fist, the hands of prayer and the receiving antenna are one gesture.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins at its summit. The first movement of Storm carries the title’s own words, and under them a theme in a major key rises to the first summit of the record. The hope is given first, before anything has been done to earn it. Then the side turns. It gathers a second height in Gathering Storm, passes through a recording made at a gas station in Los Angeles, and darkens into Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way. In twenty-two minutes the record has stated what it will spend the rest of its length coming back to.
The architecture is four tracks, one to each side of a double LP and two to each of two CDs: Storm and Static on the first disc, Sleep and Antennas to Heaven on the second. Each track is a single piece divided into titled movements, nineteen in all, four on the first side, five on the second, three on the third and seven on the last. The first three sides run within a minute of one another, about twenty-two or twenty-three minutes each; the last is about four minutes shorter and the most divided. The whole runs about eighty-seven minutes, and the two discs are its two halves.
The ensemble is a rock band enlarged: guitars, basses, drums and strings, with a glockenspiel, and no singer. Its method is the slow crescendo, a passage held near silence and brought by stages to the full force of every player at once, and it is used on every side. What keeps the method from becoming a formula is the material that precedes each climax: a recorded voice, a drone, the noise of a broadcast. The record was released in October 2000 by Constellation in Montreal and Kranky in Chicago, the band’s second full-length album after F♯ A♯ ∞.
Movement II
The third movement of Storm is named for a place and a day. Its title marks a gas station in Los Angeles and the date 14 May 2000, and a recording made there is set inside a symphonic side as a movement in its own right. That is the record’s method for keeping its music in the world: a Montreal street address names a movement on the last side, and a glockenspiel duet is recorded on a campsite at Rhinebeck, New York. The music is abstract, and the places it is set among are exact, down to the day.
Static is the darkest side. It opens in Terrible Canyons of Static, passes through Atomic Clock and Chart #3, and holds for long stretches to drone, broadcast noise and texture, the sound of transmission with no message in it. Then, late, it rises once, in World Police and Friendly Fire, out of the darkest material on the record, before falling to its last movement, where the buildings are sleeping. The single rise counts for more because of the length of ground it climbs from, and the side’s titles name the condition the climb is made against.
Here the record’s limit shows most plainly. Elsewhere the quiet ground is the approach to what rises out of it; in the middle of Static it is for a time only ground. Atomic Clock and Chart #3 are passages of texture that could be shortened without the side losing its argument, and the side’s climax is reached late. The first disc ends in the dark, at the record’s midpoint, with one height behind it and the night ahead.
Movement III
The second disc begins with a voice. Murray Ostril, an old man, remembers Coney Island and a time when people slept on the beach, and says they do not now. The movement keeps his phrase as its title, “They Don’t Sleep Anymore on the Beach”. It is the most direct statement the record makes: a common life that existed within one man’s memory and has gone. The voice is particular, recorded and unadorned, and the ensemble waits behind it.
Then Monheim. From near silence the whole ensemble builds, over many minutes, to the greatest climax on the record, and the closing movement, Broken Windows, Locks of Love Pt. III, rises again after it. The answer to the old man is not a sentence. It is the gathering of many players into one force, and the gathering takes the time it takes. Cut to four minutes, the climax would be an effect; at its length it is a vigil kept. The side holds the record’s thesis entire: a loss spoken by one voice, answered by many in sound.
This is also where the record’s disclosure stops. The loss is stated, by Ostril and by the titles of the first disc. The hope is not stated anywhere. That people gather without a god toward a hope they cannot name is what the music enacts, not a thing the record says, and the record leaves it to duration and force. It is a deliberate choice, and an honest one: the found voices speak of what has been taken, and nothing in the work claims to know what will replace it.
Movement IV
The long instrumental rock record existed before this one. Slint’s Spiderland (1991), Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991), Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) and Mogwai’s Young Team (1997) had made the form, and minimalism, drone and Górecki’s Third Symphony had supplied the slow build. Above all the band had made its own template, on F♯ A♯ ∞ (1997, expanded 1998) and the Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada EP (1999). This record inherits all of it.
What it adds is scale and plan. The four sides become four movements under one arc; the street recording becomes a load-bearing part of the form; the collective refuses faces, singles and press. Measured against the rock album of 2000, the departure is total: no singer, no song, four pieces of about twenty minutes. Measured against what it inherits, it is an enlargement, and the enlargement is the turn. The stake was small in capital, because an independent collective with no mass audience had little to lose, and the wager was placed on ground the band had already cleared.
Within its field the record became the measure. The slow crescendo of massed guitars and strings became a convention of the instrumental bands of the following decade, and this album became the one by which the genre is judged. Much of that descent runs from the band’s work as a whole, not from this record alone, and its successors took the crescendo and left the frame: the build without the streets, the dates and the old man’s beach. That is the ordinary fate of a form, and it leaves the frame to this record.
Movement V
The last side is the most divided: seven movements in under nineteen minutes. It opens with Moya’s sung fragment, passes through Edgyswingsetacid, a glockenspiel duet recorded on a campsite and a recording on a Montreal street, climbs in She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field, sinks into Deathkamp Drone, and rises a last time in the movement that carries the title’s closing words. The record disperses before it gathers again, and the smallest sound on it and the darkest stand on the same side.
The title is the figure the four sides move toward. Storm, static, sleep and heaven: a descent through weather and broadcast noise into night and memory, and a rise at the end to a single gesture, the raised fist of protest, the hands lifted in prayer and the antenna that receives, held as one. It is protest, worship and reception at once. The figure is carried by the titles and their order, and the music beneath them is abstract; without the words, the sides would keep their arcs and lose the figure they rise toward.
Twenty-six years on, the recording survives whole and in print on its first label, with little in its sound to date it, and its standing has risen. What holds it below the summit is what it chose not to do. Its hope is enacted, not stated; its myth is carried by titles; its reach, wide in its field, is thin in kind; and the orders of the world it names are given to sound, with no voice to hold a consciousness among them. Within those limits it is complete, and it ends where it began, rising.
Act III · The Twelve
Length is not the charge. A record whose argument is the long approach must spend time, and the quiet ground before each climax is what the climax answers. The subtractive test bites inside the sides. Storm and Sleep resist it: in each the recorded voice or the quiet ground is required by what rises after it, and the old man’s memory is what Monheim’s long build is for. Static is the soft side: Atomic Clock and Chart #3 are passages of texture that could be shortened, and its climax comes late. The last side is the most assembled, and two of its seven movements, Edgyswingsetacid and the glockenspiel duet, would cost colour, not sense.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: the common life of the city has been withdrawn, and what remains is people gathering, without a god, toward a hope they cannot name. The record’s words state the first half. Murray Ostril remembers people sleeping on the beach and says they do not now, and the movement keeps his phrase as its title, “They Don’t Sleep Anymore on the Beach”. World Police and Friendly Fire and Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way name the condition. The second half, the hope, is carried by sound alone, in the slow massing of the ensemble into one force: a meaning enacted, not said. Nothing in the work states the answer.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Height reaches the top of the medium, on every side. Storm opens at a summit, the rising major-key theme of its first movement, and builds a second in Gathering Storm. Static rises once, in World Police and Friendly Fire, out of the darkest material on the record. Sleep holds the greatest elevation: after the old man’s voice, Monheim builds from near silence over many minutes to a climax of the whole ensemble, and the last movement rises again. The final side climbs in She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer. Dread counts too, in Deathkamp Drone. Static’s middle and the collage of the last side hold it off the top.
Score: 9.2 / 10
A pattern is built across the four sides, not only evoked: storm, then static, then sleep, then heaven. It descends through weather and broadcast noise into night and memory, and rises at the end to the title’s gesture, where the raised fist, the hands of prayer and the receiving antenna become one figure. The old man’s beach is a lost Eden spoken by a particular man; the holy road, the cancer towers and the death camp drone are the fallen city. The particulars stay particular. What holds the axis is that titles and placement carry the pattern while the music is abstract: without the titles the sides keep their arcs and lose their myth.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Measured from rock, the departure is total: no singer, no single, four pieces of about twenty minutes, an ensemble with strings, recorded voices as movements, no faces and no press. The record turns its inheritance into a symphonic plan, four sides as four movements under one arc, with the street recording set into the form as structure. What keeps it near the bar is that the tradition already held much of the turn: Spiderland, Talk Talk, Tortoise and Mogwai had made the long instrumental form, minimalism had supplied the slow build, and the band’s own F♯ A♯ ∞ had made the template. The stake was small in capital: there was no mass audience to lose.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Change the form and most of what the record knows goes, because its knowledge is in duration: hope that arrives only after long waiting, and force that exists only as many players gathered. Cut Monheim to four minutes and its climax is an effect; at its length it is a vigil kept. The recorded voices place the music in real streets, so that the ensemble answers a world, not a mood. The sequence argues too: the record begins at its summit, descends, rises again in Sleep, and disperses before its last climax. Only the crescendo’s return on every side, and the arranged passages of Static and the last side, hold it short.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Twenty-six years supply evidence. The record’s standing rose over the period rather than settled, it has stayed in print on its original label, and it became the record by which its genre is measured. Formal depth shows on return: the dense layering of guitars, basses and strings rewards close listening, and the placing of the recorded voices yields more on each hearing. The return is shown more in listening than in a literature of study, and part of the semantic yield is projection: an instrumental record with cryptic titles invites it, and part of what listeners find there is their own.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Its field is independent instrumental rock. The intrinsic force is the fullest statement of a possibility: the rock ensemble as orchestra, the album as four symphonic movements and field recording as structure. Most of those elements stood already in the band’s debut and its precedents, so it reorganised by completion more than invention, and much of the descent runs from the band’s work as a whole. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the slow crescendo of massed guitars and strings became a convention of the following decade, and this became the record by which its genre is measured, though successors took the crescendo, not the frame.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Survival is weighed over twenty-six years. The form survives whole: a recording continuously in print, with no part lost, which has outlived the double album of the CD era and the millennial dread it was heard against. The fabric carries little period signature, since strings, guitars and drums in a room date less than programmed rhythm or bright production, and the street recordings are dated by design, as documents. Presence holds the figure where it stands: continuous within its field and narrower beyond it. The record stands level with films of its years such as The Thin Red Line, below works of its age whose public is wider, and far below what has lasted centuries.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere. The central command is dynamic architecture over twenty minutes: a large ensemble held at near silence and brought by stages to full force without the line breaking, at least four times. The drums and basses are arranged as weight, not doubling; the strings carry the long melodic lines that the guitars answer with tremolo and drone; the recorded voices are cut in with an ear for transition. The costs are not of detail, because they fall where the form arrives: the climaxes lose definition at their peaks, the tuning is loose in places, and the harmony keeps to a few modal progressions over long spans. Command at the top of the design with its realisation partial is the degree of The Large Bathers; the larger architecture keeps it above F♯ A♯ ∞.
Score: 8.8 / 10
One law governs the record: a fragile, particular thing held inside a ruined public space, and gathered slowly into collective force or lost to it. The two most distant elements, the old man’s spoken memory and the full climax of Monheim after it, obey it: his voice the lost commons, Monheim the gathering that answers it. The furthest apart in register, the glockenspiel duet and Deathkamp Drone, obey it too: the small private sound and the world around it. The range runs from street recording to drone and orchestral climax. The law strains on the last side, where Edgyswingsetacid and Moya’s sung fragment sit loosely, and in Static’s middle.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no further discount for the album form. Present are the city and the state, in the world police; broadcast, in static and the antenna; memory, in the old man’s beach; the sacred, in the holy road and the title’s prayer; the natural order, in storm, beach and campsite; and the collective, which the ensemble embodies. One arc and one law join them. What holds the figure here is the missing voice: consciousness is held only in the recorded speakers, the family, desire and labour are absent, and most orders are named by a title and given to sound, which carries their weight, not their content.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime at 9.2, then The Living Form and The Inner Law at 9.0, The Bottomless Well at 8.9 and The Made at 8.8. Height reached on every side and greatest after an old man’s voice; a form whose knowledge is in duration; one law, the fragile thing held inside a ruined public space, from a street recording to an orchestral climax; a depth of sound shown on return over twenty-six years; and a command of dynamics that brings a large ensemble from near silence to full force, though its climaxes lose definition at their peaks.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.2: the city, the state, broadcast, memory, the sacred, the natural order and the collective are present under one arc, but without a singing voice consciousness is held only in the recorded speakers, the family, desire and labour are absent, and most orders are named by a title and given to sound. Below the rest, The Inevitable and The Archetypal Deep at 8.0: the middle of Static and the interludes of the last side could be shortened, and the myth is built by titles and placement over music that is abstract.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 9.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Swerve at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Imperishable at 8.4, Pressure on Tradition at 8.4, The Unconcealment at 8.3 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.0, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2.
Basis · the complete album as released by Constellation and Kranky in October 2000, four tracks in sequence, one to each side of a double LP and two to each of two CDs, about eighty-seven minutes, judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception; no recording, score or sleeve was in hand. The album is the unit; live versions, the band’s other records and the packaging are used only as evidence. The record has no sung lyric. Its words are its titles and a few recorded voices, and only titles are quoted, in wording that is certain; their punctuation and capitals vary between editions. Track lengths are given only roughly. Facts that could not be verified, among them the day of release, the studio and engineer, the players, the lengths of the movements within each side and the speakers’ words beyond the titles, are not given.