A Hundred Thousand Words

Like most cult cultural touchstones, instrumental band Godspeed You! Black Emperor has risen to heights hitherto unforeseen by most bands of their ilk due to their inaccessibility. Even before their seemingly sudden hiatus was called in ten years ago, the band revelled in shirking the spotlight, both literally (their immersive live shows shrouded the members in shadows) and figuratively (with no singular spokesperson, very few interviews were conducted or band photographs taken). Their debut EP Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada in 1999 didn't even have the band's name on the album cover. The air of mystery extended to their music – radio static accompanying portentous voice samples, eye-of-the-storm tranquillity before an explosion of noise that could be physically felt as well as heard. Their song titles, artwork and liner notes across an EP and three albums were the only way to engage in the band's philosophy, a tactile communion that somehow accentuated these immense cathartic soundscapes. Then there were the live shows, audio/visual experiences that people still talk of in fervent rapture today.

After coming back to take part in an All Tomorrow's Parties festival in the UK in 2010, GY!BE have picked up where they left off, a band picking and choosing their moments of exposure, adding acolytes to their cause with every show. Nevertheless their comeback in this age of money-grabbing reunions was still a massive surprise.

“There's a time for a person to make music and a time to make music with a lot of people,” drummer Aidan Girt matter-of-factly states – in the downtime he has put out a number of releases under his own electronic project 1-Speed Bike. “With Godspeed – there are eight of us now [Bruce Cawdron and Norsola Johnson have left the fold, whilst original guitarist Mike Moya is back] – it's a process. Does it inform our sound? Of course – we are a band in the true sense. We sit down, we talk together, we fight and we stumble our way through it. It's a fucking nightmare, but it's how we do it. What we have left is this big sound where everyone's influence is on it, it's never a single vision. Everyone has to be there, present.”

It has been this channelling of many people's visions into one singular crystalline focus that has drawn a lot of attention to how the band functions. Girt maintains that despite the difficulties inherent in such a large collective of personalities, maintaining a singular vision in a world where history perpetually repeats itself is the overarching impetus to continue.

“It's difficult – there are eight of us travelling in eight, sometimes 16 different directions, so it's hard to get us all in the same room. But we have worked in this way from the beginning, and nothing has changed. There are always an awful lot of constants. There are still billions of people without food to eat, billions of people that don't have a proper home. There are millions of people that do have those things but are still under the poverty line. There's a hole in the ozone layer. Maybe there are different politicians here and there, and the world's attention goes from one place to another…but the suffering is still there, the inequality is still there. There was no single moment or chance encounter that brought us back, because everything is the same.”

Girt doesn't feel that the hiatus has made any difference to the landscape of the world, musical or otherwise. In fact, whether GY!BE came back now or ten years from now doesn't change why the band operates – it's a universal need to commune, connect and release that propels them forward.

“I don't feel any different at all, except for the internet – that thing is pretty baffling,” Girt laughs. “But when we started out, the music industry was really baffling too. So things haven't really changed in the past ten years. We still want the same thing from our music – that people don't feel alone, that they can see the bigger world, the suffering and inequalities around them, the shit way that everything is set up from colonialism to capitalism, all of these things that shape their world. So there are all of these head-level things, but there is also a heart-level where people feel lost, a pain that people feel that when people go around their day-to-day business they lose touch of. That's for me too – I get up in the morning and make my oatmeal and my coffee, I go to get my car fixed… you can get lost. This isn't escapism though, we play everything with a political context. The nice thing about a band that play 45-minute songs that go from being really quiet to really fucking loud, with nothing to look at except these crazy films, is that it can take you out of that world and maybe bring you back to that pain that you have held for when you've lost things in your life. Hopefully the realisation of why these things are lost to you, why this crazy shit happens, why people are always getting fucked over, will come. Even we take part in that – we still have normal things we feel we have to do, we put gas in our cars… or into planes so we can get to Australia to share this with you!”

In their first statement after re-forming, the band stated that all that mattered was the keep on keeping on; all that mattered were the shows. Nevertheless, it's clear that Girt, and GY!BE, still feel strongly about worldly injustices, largely at the hands of the 1%, and see their music as their way of communicating these grievances. Having stated in the past that they create heavy but joyous music, this attitude persists with 2012's Hallelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, a record of old and new material that nonetheless continued right where they left off in 2002. While it is obvious that they are compelled to espouse their political viewpoints via statements made in rare interviews and liner notes, the fact that GY!BE is heralded as one of the most forward-thinking political rock bands in the world is a curious thought seeing as they remain an instrumental collective.

“You do it through long song titles,” Girt chuckles. “I don't pay much attention to music journalism, but one thing that stuck with me is that often people will say that we're an outstanding band with a political vision. I grew up listening to albums like Crass' Feeding Of The 5000 or [Public Enemy's] It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, and if you just look at how many words are in those albums compared to us, it's crazy. It Takes A Nation… has two hundred thousand words in it or something, and we have a song title and some crazy movie. I think it's a sign of a problem where us taking the stand that we do is so profound for people.  There is so much more talking that needs to be done in the world. We just scratch on the surface of things. We are babies next to Chuck D, we are toddlers in terms of his eloquence or ways of explaining how things are fucked in the world. We didn't come to exist in a vacuum, we have influences too, and things came before us.”

“At the end of the day, I'm just a fucking musician,” Girt asserts. “I'm there trying to make the craziest, fucked-up sounds with my band, and vibing off the band, and creating something, like a fucking musician. When I look out and see all these people who have spent their hard earned money staring at us, that's heavy. I am blessed that people want that from us, and I am blessed that I get to do that. So I play my balls off, it's my duty.”

Godspeed You! Black Emperor will be playing the following dates:

Wednesday 13 February - The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley QLD
Thursday 14 February - The Enmore, Sydney NSW
Friday 15 February - The Forum Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 16 February - Sunday 17 February - ATP I'll Be Your Mirror, Altona VIC