Time | Audio | Visual |
---|---|---|
0.00 | A tensed, sustained drone emanating from strings and wavering from one restive pitch to the next. | Abstracted close-up of moving tire tread, sporadically blacking out to reveal the word “hope” in scrawled lettering; discreet entrances from side of stage. |
5.00 | The same drone, thickened with guitar feedback, interpenetrated by the rattling of drums. | The same tire tread, transitioning into brightened sky, panning down to mountainous heap of garbage and industrial waste. |
9.40 | Resolute three-note bass line, capped by shimmering waves of guitar and violin, consummated by majestic detonation of heavy guitars. | Black-and-white footage of lorries pushing along desolate bridge; a scrapheap receiving tribute from a magnetic crane; a Canadian nine-piece collective shrouded in equalizing obscurity. |
14.15 | Anticipatory chiming double stop, emergent violin breaths. | Expanse of dirty water bordering industrial estate/wasteland, its surface misshaping rusted iron and smoldering concrete. |
20.30 | Rushing orchestra of syncopated guitars and sleepless drums, coalescing into a reprise of the earlier “majestic detonation” and then reducing to the poised “three-note bass line.” | The same unrelenting cranes, diggers, scrapheaps, lorries, and bridges, occasionally reflected in the pool of rippling water, later erased by a blank sky. |
Time | Audio | Visual |
---|---|---|
26.15 | Ringing metallophone and Asiatic strings, crushed by gigantic frequencies of distortion. | Scattered blueprints of machinery and industrial equipment, of the technological bases of particular economic systems and forms of human existence; the word “clamp” appearing and reappearing several times. |
32.00 | Irrational 4/4 guitar expletives, asymmetrically winding through non-Western scale, in defiance of symmetrical Western straitjackets. | Flashes of rotated, inverted and illegible documents, intermittently layered with mugshots of the persecuted and the criminal; a prostrate corpse; foot-tapping and head-banging guitarists. |
36.50 | Doomed power chords, translucent violin notes evaporating into the air above submissive audience. | Files burning slowly, circles of heat expanding to delete the records these files keep on the world; a dim stage in which the absence of light makes it difficult to see who’s doing what; a dim stage on which it’s difficult to determine roles, hierarchies, and power structures. |
40.30 | See-sawing bass has a premonition of martial percussion, oscillating violin wisps, and aggravated riff. | More documents, letters, doodles, drawings, buildings, and abstract photographs, flitting from one to the next in excess of Reason. |
Time | Audio | Visual |
---|---|---|
44.29 | Throbbing strums of clean six-string, a violin motif deepening/heightening their mood of nostalgia and reverie. | Plants and their leaves trembling in the wind, ribbons of sunlight washing down on them. |
48.44 | Beautifully deceptive change of tone, inflecting the bass with a foreboding that’s conveyed to a fuzzy lead and glacial surroundings, and that’s converted into weighty stop-start punches of guitar. | Yellow leaves in stark relief, supplanted by a batch of inviolable trees, then another unending body of water; undemonstrative band members commingling with three projectors and clotted hundreds to form sublime object. |
58.32 | Tireless keening, budding out of naturalistic tranquility and hurtling through swagger and drum-rolls into planet-sized coruscation. | Passage through and outside of rail tunnels, in reverse. |
Time | Audio | Visual |
---|---|---|
65.18 | Lumbering double-drum attack, magnified by the über-blues of a colossal guitar-wall, which smooths from chord to chord with as much ire as grace. | Scrolling tape reels, fluttering and fading out in a perpetual loop. |
69.08 | Elated chorus of guitar swoops and violin trills, its humble triumph pulling at darkened musicians on their seats, as well as the upright sardines before the stage. | The same. |
72.57 | Calmed contemplation sliding along the fretboard in assurance of its own rectitude and propriety, finding weightless confirmation in the song of nearby fingerboard. | Sideswiping exposures of a distant and isolated building, stranded in the middle of nowhere. |
79.00 | Ominous atmospheric hum, windy sheets flowing through each other without ever meeting. | Static shot of same building in desolate prairie, doubled via twin projections and superimposed by ephemeral outlines of itself. |
83.00 | Hanging clouds suspended by three guitars and two basses, portentously condensing into a funereal procession, then releasing itself into euphoric affirmation of an undying spirit. | A shoreline, on which a solitary middle-aged man walks toward the disappearing horizon; closeups of same man, looking tired and bemused. | 89.38 | Grave yet determined progression-escalation from fragile beginnings, aware of the predicament yet mulishly unfazed. | Darkened highways, replete with telegraph poles and telephone cables, fracturing in a thousand directions. |
Time | Audio | Visual |
---|---|---|
96.31 | Delicate single-string melody, inflated by hovering guitar effects and falling symbols, recognized by select members of the Lausanne crowd. | Out-of-focus police lights, coming into focus to reveal the intimidating uniformity of a police convoy. |
102.56 | Single-string melody accelerates and panics, before collapsing at the feet of mourning cello and violin, before returning in concert with the evening’s sole appearance of the human voice. | Prices for commodities available on the world’s markets, including “hogs,” “soya beans,” and “ore.” |
107.00 | Agitated flourishes of loosened violin bow, whipping up an underlying turbulence into a full-on storm of churning guitar. | Wall Street, people protesting on. |
Time | Audio | Visual |
---|---|---|
0.00-113.51 | Constancy, coherence. | Inconstancy, incoherence. |
Setlist:
01. Hope Drone/[new song]
02. Mladic
03. [new song]
04. Behemoth, aka Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress
05. East Hastings
More about: Godspeed You! Black Emperor