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Mykonos · 08-02-2011, 01:54 PM

A friend of mine got to see these guys live the other day. He put a review up basically just to taunt me with his luck, but I felt you guys should be taunted by it as well.

Quote:

Last night I saw the elder statesmen of post-rock, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, playing at the University of East Anglia. For a band who were on an extended hiatus until recently and even then rarely tour, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Norwich does give good music venue, whether it's the subtle grandeur and homeliness of the Arts Centre or the classic sweaty dive club that is the Waterfront. The UEA's own hall, however, fits into much the same categories that most university venues do, a soulless black box with a bar selling the following selection of beers - Carling. But with a huge projection screen slung up behind the stage and the stage itself littered with a staggering array of musical equipment, Godspeed made it their own. They didn't make us wait long before things got going - as the roadies set up, the ominous bass drone from The Dead Flag Blues played on a continuous loop before one by one, the eight band members silently stepped onto the stage and began playing without so much a nod to the audience. There's been a few line-up changes over the years, but the mainstays were all present and correct - guitarists Efrim Menuck, Mike Moya and David Bryant, bassist Mauro Pezzente, double bassist Thierry Amar, violinist Sophie Trudeau and drummers Bruce Cawdron and Aidan Girt made up the line-up last night. So, as the word 'Hope' flickered on and off in huge letters on the screen behind, they began to play a note. And what a note it was, starting off as a double bass and violin drone as walls of guitars, fed through racks of effects pedals and manipulated with violin bows and screwdrivers, built up to white noise whilst drums pounded and clattered with growing intensity. And that was just the introduction.

To put it simply, this was quite unlike any gig I have ever been to. Two and a half hours of continuous music, lush, orchestral and moody instrumental music with songs lasting up to twenty minutes, beginning as barely-there ambient pads and building up to glorious walls of noise then falling down again. No breaks between the songs, no 'Thank you's, no crowd interaction at all apart from a brief wave goodbye at the end in fact. The band all played in a semicircle, all concentrating on their own instruments but somehow interacting almost telepathically with each other, like they were just parts of one single entity. It's seeing them live that makes you realise there really is no other band like Godspeed - even their imitators have managed to capture the sound, but not the point. The audience stood enraptured, cheering whenever a snippet of violin or guitar heralded the beginning of a new song with a familiar melody.

Then, there was what was going on behind. Two mechanical projectors flashed a visual overload onto the screen behind the band - footage of grab cranes and magnets sifting through rubbish at a huge tip next to a busy highway, time-lapse footage of power stations and factories that made them look like they were on fire, several means of transportation heading into gathering storms, and during Providence, endless pages of ancient religious and scientific documents in Latin and Hebrew that scrolled dizzyingly down and across the screens. Coupled with the racket that the band were making, it made for an aural and visual overload.

And then, as East Hastings reached an ear-splitting finale, that was it. As I say, this really is quite unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. For those who care, the band played (in no particular order) Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls, Mother****er = Redeemer, Blaise Bailey Finnegan III, Storm and the majority of Static, Providence and East Hastings.

I am going to give this gig an accolade that appears quite often in the world of amateur reviewing - 10/10.