Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
By Mark Richardson
9.3 / 10
GY!BEの新譜がついに出ましたね!前回のATPで来日した時に話題になって、そこで知ったのですが、ライブ見ておきたかったと後悔の念でいっぱいです。
ライブを見た方は感慨深くこの新譜も聴いていらっしゃることでしょう。
ということで訳してみました。こういう実験的な作品のレビューは読んでいて面白いです。
千年祭の訪れを間近にして、Godspeed You! Black Emperorはしかるべき時に存在するしかるべきバンドであった。そのデビューアルバムのF#A#∞を1997年に発表し、技術的スピードが加速する中、音楽ジャンルというものはごたまぜになり、リスナーたちは音楽というものが一体どこへ向かうのか考えていただろう。Godspeedはしかし、カナダの自由でミステリアスな集団の集まりで(ギタリストのEfrim Menuckがリーダーのようだが、彼らはあくまでユニットとして受け取られることを好む)、アナーキーな政治に傾倒し、Ennio morriconeとミニマリズムを融合させ、そこにサウンドを見つけ、さらにメタルから影響を受けたノイズを鳴らし、かなり興味をそそる可能性を示していた。彼らはスタートダッシュから2002年までは忙しくやっていたが、2002年--Yanqui U.X.Oを出してからは3つの壮大なるフルアルバムと長いEPを出し--そしてメンバーはしばらくGodspeedを棚に置いておくことにしたのだった。もし彼らがずっと戻らなかったら、また新たな音楽の調べを発表することもなかっただろうし、問題にもならなかっただろう。彼らの遺産はゆるぎない安定そのものだった。
だがGodspeedは2010年にまたライブ活動を再開し、それが一番最初にシーンに舞い降りたときのように、私たちが存在するとも知らなかった、もしくは忘れていたような音楽の穴を埋めてくれたのである。そして、2週間前、新アルバムに関する驚きの告知がされた、Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!という、きっかりファーストアルバムから10年後のリリースだった。またしても、彼らのタイミングは完璧だ。もしGodspeedが千年祭を前にして、バンドをまた再開する瞬間だと感じたのなら、それは今だ、この急速にうつりゆく文化の塗り替えや、一口サイズの音楽消費の時代に、彼らは時代がまさに必要としているやり方から自分たちは外れていると感じているだろう。
Allelujah!を「政治」というレンズを通してみると、とても魅力的に見えるが、特にこれはGodspped自身がこの観点をずっと勧めてきたからでもある。彼らのレコードを最後に聴いたとき、これは9・11の次の年だったが、アフガニスタンへの侵略がうまいこと進行中であり、イラク戦争はすぐそこに迫っていたというときだった。私たちが腰を落ち着けているのは今、アメリカの視点から言えば、これはだんだんと不人気になりつつある首相と、彼が事務所をさる時に飛び出してくるであろう経済バブルに火をつけることの二つの戦いによって明らかになるであろう十年の始まりだ。Godspeedの音楽とその実演発表はこれらへの懸念から生まれるエネルギーを描いている。つまりGodspeedが今やっている新しい音楽を聞けば、--この選挙のシーズン、そして戦争とそれに続く経済のことがまだ毎日二人の首相候補が2000年代初期の伝説を掴むために議論され--政治的瞬間がこれがどういうふうに聞こえるかということに影響するのか認めざるを得ないだろう。
だがしかし、バンドの政治的立場を見れば、何か重要なことをわかりにくくしてしまうのだ。Godspeed You! Black Emperorは芸術を作り出しているのであって、社説を書いているのではないということだ。それに、彼らが芸術を作り出すことは彼ら自身にとって、芸術を創りだす状況においては純粋な意思伝達と関係のないところで、ある種の余裕が生まれるというということなのだ。それが壮大な破壊行為とつながり、衰えや損失からは程遠い禁欲さを生み出している。つまり、彼らの政治的スローガンのすべては意味ありげなタイトルだが、地球規模の運命について取り上げており、Godspeedの音楽が’かなりパーソナルに感じられることと結びついている。その音楽を聴くとき、踏みにじられた場所、つまり資本主義のピラミッド構造や世界の終りに存在する場所をしのぐようなことについて考える必要はない。私は超越について考えているが、ノイズの生々しいほどの美しさ、悲劇的な結末といった超越性のことだ。Godspeedの音楽作品は素晴らしい出来だ、というのも抽象的にも取れるし、一定の基準で測ることも、それから一大陸においても卓越した複雑体系にまで大きくなることができるし、家庭の寝室ぐらい快適な何かにまで縮むことも可能だからだ。だから、彼らの壮大な音楽の輪郭を自分たちの普遍的な生活に置き換えてみれば、それが自然でかつ刺激的だと思えるはずだ。
Allelujah!の二つの長いトラック、MladicとWe Drift Like Worried Fireは2003年からバンドのライプではよく演奏された曲だった。だから、レコードそのものはある種Godspeedが未完成の仕事を仕上げたというか、影響力やパワーあふれるライブを行っていたところで行っていた、感化的ともいえるようなこれまでの活動行程で、すでにもうその時点で出来上がっていた音楽を出してきたみたいに感じられるかもしれない。まとめてしまうと、こういった曲群は40分もの、このバンドを偉大ならしめてきたものの集大成なのだ。Mlandicは全体的にどんよりとした雰囲気に包まれているが脅迫的で、始めに聞こえるボーカルの断片からギターを弾く音、ストリングスが中東様式で見つけたような音を鳴らし、フィードバックの暗雲が聞こえる。これがGodspeedというSwansの再演や、ひどいメタル劇を非難して彼らが学んだことなのだ。Mladicには「これからの望み」といったものは事実見えてこないが、ある種の暗い影を落としたカタルシス(浄化作用)がある。Godspeedは決してこんなにヘビーに聞こえることもない、特に彼らがどれほどあるテーマから転換したところで本質を失わずにいられるというのは非常に印象的だ。
「We Dridt Like Worried Fire」はMladicのB面の曲だが、二曲とも文学的で象徴的だ。気味の悪い白黒の道端のイメージや破壊されたもののワンシーンを見て、私たちはGodspeedの音楽がどれほど楽しげなものなのかを見落としてしまう。たった２，３の音数からなるシンプルなギターの調べを基に、Worried Fireは10分間ものあいだの次々と一つに集まっていく音が生じていき、一つの形をなしていく曲のうちの一つだが、これは聴いている人がわからなくあってしまうまで荘厳な響きとなるまで続いてくのだ。そしてその瞬間、Godspeedは演奏をやめ、ギターの爆発的な音を仕上げていき、視界に飛び込んできたもの全てをかっさらっていくのだ。「Worried Fire」は政治とかレコードビジネスにおける陰謀やら、インターネットの馬鹿らしいチャットのことなど忘れさせてしまうような音楽だ、そしてまっさらな彼らの非凡で美しい音楽へと連れ込んでしまう、笑顔を浮かべながら涙してしまうような音楽なのだ。彼らの曲が鳴っているあいだ、他の世界は20分間どこかへ行ってしまうだろう。
"Worried Fire"はまたtGodspeedの初期の同類バンドであるMogwaiやDirty Threeといったバンドたちやそれに続くExplosion in the SkyやMonoといったバンドと同じく、ある不変の何かをもって書かれた曲だが、そういったバンドたちはこの高みを超えることはない。Godpseedは常にボリュームオーバーで、足し引きといった計算を超えている。さらにもしYanquiが自分たちはちょっとでも降下しているとでも気づけば、Allelujah!はGodspeedが必ずこういった音を持っていることを明らかにしてくれる。そしてこのアルバムの二つの短めの曲、"Their Helicopters"と"Strung Like Lights at Three Printemps Erable"はその本質において彼らが確実な耳を持っていることを示している。二つとも豪華な、濃密なドローンに溢れており、Helicopeter"は特にフィードバックやアコーディオンの素晴らしく分厚いミックスの曲だ、その一方で"Strung Like Lights"は軽やかで不安定ではあるがデビューアルバムのF#A#∞のセカンドサイドで聞くことのできるような凝縮されたグルーブとはまた違う。
このデビュー作のヴァイナルバージョンに収録されているたくさんの要素の中の一つに、建築の設計図のような形の図形がある。これは"Faulty Schematiics of Ruined Machine [to Scale]"「台無しになった機械の誤設計図」と名付けられているが、恐れ、望み、欲望、それから後悔と書かれた四つの斧の図が含まれていてそこにある文章は謎めいた、絶望的な言語により図形の要素を説明している。その文章の一段落は遠く離れた衛星と壊れたテープの機械との関係に関するテープがぐるぐると回る様子に焦点を当てている、その回転は「気が狂ったソビエト連邦が大気圏を突っ切るロケットを打ち上げて、長く、それこそ三人分の一生をかけないと完全に聞きとおせないぐらいなのだ」としている。Godspeedはテープの延々に流すというのをライブでもレコードもやっており、そしてカギとなる重要な視覚的要素には16ミリの映画を延々と流すのだ。これはメンバーであるKarl Lemieuxが集めてきたものだ。このバンドにとっては、常に何かのサイクルや儀式を延々とリピートすることで何かを訴えている。--音やイメージが地平線で立ち消え、それからまた戻ってくる、それはまるでHotel 2 Tango(ケベックにあるレコーディングスタジオ)という彼らの練習場で駆け回る列車のようだ。惑星の軌道、人々が生まれ死んでいく、そして音楽はある瞬間を持つが、それから戻ってくる前に消えてしまう。そしてつまり、Allelujah!とともに、新しくもあり、また私たちが二度と聞くことはないだろうと思っていたバンドの古くもある音楽アルバム、この一枚は私たちが聞くことができる間は真摯に受け止めて、正当に評価するべきなのだ。
Around the turn of the millennium, Godspeed You! Black Emperor were the right band at the right time. They arrived with their debut album, F#A#∞, in 1997, when the speed of technology was accelerating, genres were being shuffled, and people were thinking about where music might go. Godspeed, a loose and mysterious collective from Canada (guitarist Efrim Menuck seemed like the leader, but they preferred to be received as a unit) with an anarchist political bent who fused Ennio Morricone, minimalism, found sound, and metal-inflected noise, presented one intriguing possibility.
The group stayed busy during its initial run-- by 2002, when they released Yanqui U.X.O., they had put out three expansive full-lengths and a long EP-- and then they put Godspeed on the shelf and went away for a while. If they'd never gotten back together and had never released another note of music, it wouldn't have mattered. Their legacy was secure.
But Godspeed started playing live again in 2010 and, just as it was when they first came on the scene, they filled a hole in music that we either didn't know existed or had forgotten about. Then, two weeks ago, came the surprise announcement of a new album, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, their first in exactly 10 years. Once again, their timing is impeccable. If Godspeed around the turn of the millennium felt like a band of the moment, now, in a time of rapid cultural turnover and bite-sized music consumption, they feel out of step in a very necessary way.
It's tempting to look at Allelujah! through the lens of politics, especially since Godspeed themselves have so often encouraged this viewpoint. When we last heard from them on record, it was a year after 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan was well underway, and the war in Iraq was just around the corner. We were settling into a decade that was, from an American perspective, defined by two wars started by an increasingly unpopular president and an inflating economic bubble that would pop just as he was leaving office. Their music and presentation drew some of its energy from this anxiety. So listening to new music from Godspeed now-- during an election season, when the wars and the aftermath of that economy are still being argued every day by two presidential candidates grappling with the legacy of the early 2000s-- you can't help but allow the political moment to shape how it's heard.
But the focus on the band's politics obscures something important: Godspeed You! Black Emperor are making art, not writing editorials. And the fact that they are making art gives them leeway to do things that wouldn't work in the context of pure rhetoric. It allows them to find magnificence in destruction and build an aesthetic out of decay and loss. So for all their political slogans, pointed titles, and references to global doom, engagement with Godspeed's music can feel exceedingly personal. When listening to their music, I'm not necessarily thinking about the downtrodden transcending their place in the capitalist hierarchy or the end of the world; I'm thinking about the idea of transcendence, the raw grace of noise, and the tragedy of endings. Godspeed's music works so brilliantly because it can be abstracted and scaled, blown up into an edifice that towers over a continent or shrunk down to something that feels at home in a bedroom. So mapping the contours of their grand music onto your own ordinary life can feel both natural and inspiring.
The two lengthy tracks on Allelujah!, "Mladic" and "We Drift Like Worried Fire", have been part of the band's live repertoire since 2003. So the record feels in one sense like Godspeed taking care of unfinished business, presenting existing music from their influential run in a context that showcases its full force and power. Taken together, those tracks serve as a 40-minute summary of everything that made this band great. "Mladic" is all gloom and menace, building from an opening vocal snippet, adding pings of guitar, strings that saw away in a Middle Eastern mode, and dark clouds of feedback. This is the Godspeed that learned so much from the pummeling repetition of Swans and the fiendish drama of metal. There's not exactly hope in a track like "Mladic", but there is a kind of darkly shaded catharsis. Godspeed have never sounded quite this heavy, and it's especially impressive in how far it can veer from the themes that hold it together without losing the thread.
"We Drift Like Worried Fire" is the flip-side of "Mladic", both literally and figuratively. For all their grim black-and-white roadside imagery and scenes of destruction, it can be easy to overlook just how joyful Godspeed's music can be. Built around a simple guitar motif consisting of just a few notes, "Worried Fire" is one of those accruing pieces that gathers one element after another for 10 minutes until it's so gorgeous you almost can't take it. And at exactly that moment, Godspeed pause and then push the music over the top with an explosion of guitar that snaps everything that came before into focus. "Worried Fire" is music that makes you forget about politics and the machinations of the record business and the bullshit of internet chatter and brings you into singularity with the sheer beauty of their sound, music to make you cry with a smile on your face. When it's playing, the rest of the world goes away for 20 minutes.
"Worried Fire" is also the kind of song that Godspeed's early peers (Mogwai, Dirty Three) as well as the bands that followed (Explosions in the Sky, Mono) write with some regularity, but they never quite hit these heights. Godspeed have always been about more than volume, more than just addition and subtraction. And if Yanqui found them getting a little too close to their descendants, Allelujah! makes clear that Godspeed will always own this sound. Few can match their feel for arrangement or sense of structure. And the two shorter tracks on this album, "Their Helicopters' Sing" and "Strung Like Lights at Thee Printemps Erable", are evidence of their infallible ear for texture. They're both rich, dense drones, "Helicopter" an especially thick mix of feedback and accordion while "Strung Like Lights" is airier and more unstable, not unlike the locked groove that came at the second side of their debut F#A#∞.
In one of the many inserts that came with the vinyl version of that debut, there's a diagram that takes the form of an architectural blueprint. It's called "Faulty Schematics of Ruined Machine [to Scale]" and it contains a drawing with four axes marked as Fear, Hope, Desire, and Regret and text describing elements of the diagram in cryptic and desperate language. One paragraph highlights a drawing of a tape loop connected between a distant satellite and a broken tape machine, a loop "so long it was rocketed thru atmosphere by wigged-out Soviet Cosmonaut... it will take three lifetimes to hear in its entirety." Godspeed use tape loops, both live and on record, and the key visual element of their shows involves the projection of 16mm film loops by collective member Karl Lemieux. For this band, there's always been something appealing about repeating cycles and rituals-- sounds and images that vanish over the horizon and then come back around again, like the trains that roll by their practice space at Hotel 2 Tango. Planets orbit, people are born and die, and music has a moment and then vanishes before returning again. And so it goes with Allelujah!, an album of music that is both new and old from a band that we thought we might never hear from again, one we should appreciate while we can.
But Godspeed started playing live again in 2010 and, just as it was when they first came on the scene, they filled a hole in music that we either didn't know existed or had forgotten about. Then, two weeks ago, came the surprise announcement of a new album, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, their first in exactly 10 years. Once again, their timing is impeccable. If Godspeed around the turn of the millennium felt like a band of the moment, now, in a time of rapid cultural turnover and bite-sized music consumption, they feel out of step in a very necessary way.
It's tempting to look at Allelujah! through the lens of politics, especially since Godspeed themselves have so often encouraged this viewpoint. When we last heard from them on record, it was a year after 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan was well underway, and the war in Iraq was just around the corner. We were settling into a decade that was, from an American perspective, defined by two wars started by an increasingly unpopular president and an inflating economic bubble that would pop just as he was leaving office. Their music and presentation drew some of its energy from this anxiety. So listening to new music from Godspeed now-- during an election season, when the wars and the aftermath of that economy are still being argued every day by two presidential candidates grappling with the legacy of the early 2000s-- you can't help but allow the political moment to shape how it's heard.
But the focus on the band's politics obscures something important: Godspeed You! Black Emperor are making art, not writing editorials. And the fact that they are making art gives them leeway to do things that wouldn't work in the context of pure rhetoric. It allows them to find magnificence in destruction and build an aesthetic out of decay and loss. So for all their political slogans, pointed titles, and references to global doom, engagement with Godspeed's music can feel exceedingly personal. When listening to their music, I'm not necessarily thinking about the downtrodden transcending their place in the capitalist hierarchy or the end of the world; I'm thinking about the idea of transcendence, the raw grace of noise, and the tragedy of endings. Godspeed's music works so brilliantly because it can be abstracted and scaled, blown up into an edifice that towers over a continent or shrunk down to something that feels at home in a bedroom. So mapping the contours of their grand music onto your own ordinary life can feel both natural and inspiring.
The two lengthy tracks on Allelujah!, "Mladic" and "We Drift Like Worried Fire", have been part of the band's live repertoire since 2003. So the record feels in one sense like Godspeed taking care of unfinished business, presenting existing music from their influential run in a context that showcases its full force and power. Taken together, those tracks serve as a 40-minute summary of everything that made this band great. "Mladic" is all gloom and menace, building from an opening vocal snippet, adding pings of guitar, strings that saw away in a Middle Eastern mode, and dark clouds of feedback. This is the Godspeed that learned so much from the pummeling repetition of Swans and the fiendish drama of metal. There's not exactly hope in a track like "Mladic", but there is a kind of darkly shaded catharsis. Godspeed have never sounded quite this heavy, and it's especially impressive in how far it can veer from the themes that hold it together without losing the thread.
"We Drift Like Worried Fire" is the flip-side of "Mladic", both literally and figuratively. For all their grim black-and-white roadside imagery and scenes of destruction, it can be easy to overlook just how joyful Godspeed's music can be. Built around a simple guitar motif consisting of just a few notes, "Worried Fire" is one of those accruing pieces that gathers one element after another for 10 minutes until it's so gorgeous you almost can't take it. And at exactly that moment, Godspeed pause and then push the music over the top with an explosion of guitar that snaps everything that came before into focus. "Worried Fire" is music that makes you forget about politics and the machinations of the record business and the bullshit of internet chatter and brings you into singularity with the sheer beauty of their sound, music to make you cry with a smile on your face. When it's playing, the rest of the world goes away for 20 minutes.
"Worried Fire" is also the kind of song that Godspeed's early peers (Mogwai, Dirty Three) as well as the bands that followed (Explosions in the Sky, Mono) write with some regularity, but they never quite hit these heights. Godspeed have always been about more than volume, more than just addition and subtraction. And if Yanqui found them getting a little too close to their descendants, Allelujah! makes clear that Godspeed will always own this sound. Few can match their feel for arrangement or sense of structure. And the two shorter tracks on this album, "Their Helicopters' Sing" and "Strung Like Lights at Thee Printemps Erable", are evidence of their infallible ear for texture. They're both rich, dense drones, "Helicopter" an especially thick mix of feedback and accordion while "Strung Like Lights" is airier and more unstable, not unlike the locked groove that came at the second side of their debut F#A#∞.
In one of the many inserts that came with the vinyl version of that debut, there's a diagram that takes the form of an architectural blueprint. It's called "Faulty Schematics of Ruined Machine [to Scale]" and it contains a drawing with four axes marked as Fear, Hope, Desire, and Regret and text describing elements of the diagram in cryptic and desperate language. One paragraph highlights a drawing of a tape loop connected between a distant satellite and a broken tape machine, a loop "so long it was rocketed thru atmosphere by wigged-out Soviet Cosmonaut... it will take three lifetimes to hear in its entirety." Godspeed use tape loops, both live and on record, and the key visual element of their shows involves the projection of 16mm film loops by collective member Karl Lemieux. For this band, there's always been something appealing about repeating cycles and rituals-- sounds and images that vanish over the horizon and then come back around again, like the trains that roll by their practice space at Hotel 2 Tango. Planets orbit, people are born and die, and music has a moment and then vanishes before returning again. And so it goes with Allelujah!, an album of music that is both new and old from a band that we thought we might never hear from again, one we should appreciate while we can.
コメント
コメントを投稿