Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, August 10, 2019

There is really no other band quite like Godspeed You! Black Emperor in terms of both their post-rock music and their radical mystique. They are a large, collective ensemble that generates a truly orchestral sound, and due to their anti-capitalist politics, they avoid many of the conventions of the touring rock-music band, such as interviews and promotional appearances.  They don't even address the audience during performances - they simply walk on stage, play their music, and leave.  They're an all-instrumental band without vocals, so they have no front-person vocalist milking attention from the audience or trying to gin up enthusiasm. Most of the musicians perform seated on stage, with the only light provided by an amazing backdrop of film-loop and video projections behind them. Their shows are about the music, not the egos or personalities of the performers.

That attitude only increases the aura of mystery and intrigue about the band, which in turn heightens the interest in them. That interest was heightened still more this week by internet chatter indicating that Godspeed was performing some new, apparently as yet unrecorded music on this tour, presumably from their next, so far unannounced album.  Last night's Variety Playhouse show in Atlanta was only the third night of the tour, and therefore only the third time these fresh, new pieces of music were performed publicly.

Before all that, though, an improvisational North Carolina guitar-and-drums duo, Manas, opened.  

As per custom, Godspeed opened their set with the ominous, electronic hum of amplifiers on an empty stage and the individual members of the band casually walking onstage and contributing to the drone as the film-loop projections began and the single work "hope" flickered on the backdrop behind them.  

For the most part, the band performed as an octet, with three guitars, two basses, two drummers, and one violin.  For the middle part of their set (Fam/Famine and Undoing a Luciferian Towers), they had a guest musician on stage with them on tenor sax.  As per the band's custom, he was not introduced, but looked to be the same person who joined them on stage last year in Knoxville at Big Ears. However, while on stage he played with his back to the audience, so it was hard to identify who he was.

The film-loop and video projections behind the band are more than a mere gimmick.  Although not a musical artist, the projectionist is usually credited as a visual-art member of the band.  The projections utilize a split screen, and the repetition of the loops can create a mesmerizing, near hypnotic, effect, such as a long sequence in which a smoking jet fighter falling from the sky is tracked for a seemingly endless descent down toward the earth.  Other imagery included brutalist architecture, stock-market boards, violent crowds at political rallies, and dystopian, scorched-earth landscapes.  While being projected, the film stock is sometimes manually manipulated, run backward through the projector or at other times stopped in the projector so the heat of the bulb starts melting the individual frames and the image warps and distorts before white light breaks through.  It's all fascinating to watch, and a great visual counterpart to Godspeed's music.

Godspeed's set was nearly two hours long, with the first hour or so dominated by music from 2017's Luciferian Towers. Although titled as different songs, the Luciferian Towers pieces are really just separate movements of a larger, overall suite with the same main theme, so the entire first hour was really one, extended performance of one epic composition, interspersed by Glacier, a new piece:

Set List

1. Hope Drone
2. Bosses Hang (from LT)
3. Glacier (new song)
4. Fam/Famine (from LT)
5. Undoing a Luciferian Towers (from LT)
6. Cliff (new song)
7. Blaise Bailey Finnegan III (from 1998's Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada)

Certain parts of the internet are quite excited that Godspeed is previewing new music.  The titles of the new songs, Glacier and Cliff, are from a set list that someone got from the video projectionist at Thursday night's show in Nashville (the first night of the current tour), and someone recorded both pieces at Friday night's show in Asheville.  Someone else remastered the bootlegs and then posted them to YouTube.  Here's Glacier:

If that 15-minute taste isn't enough to slake your thirst, someone posted a terrific, high-fidelity recording of the entire performance here. 

Like every Godspeed show, it was an epic set by a unique and awesome band.  The new songs, while clearly still unfinished, sound promising and make us anticipate the next Godspeed album, when ever it's recorded and released, all the more.