GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven'

Canada's GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR raises the ante on their already ambitious orchestral rock by releasing a second full-length album. The group combines the drums and guitar of typical rock-band instrumentation with horns and strings to create music built around drones and slowly evolving melodic figures. It rises and falls from delicate introductory passages to unabashed grand climaxes. Their juxtaposition of drums with violins and lush romantic tonality brings to mind Rachel's, but their compositional scale and the pounding repetitive intensity of their dynamic peaks evoke Glenn Branca's The Ascension. The opening piece starts with five minutes of a 15-beat circular melodic pattern that is gradually embellished as the volume swells to an ecstatic roar. The release drops down to a pastoral drone that rebuilds to support an acid-etched guitar solo, which in turn yields to a unified 4/4 kraut rock pound that eventually explodes, leaving behind field recordings of public announcements mingled with wandering late-night Swell Maps piano. The other pieces use a similar set of sonic building blocks to take the listener on comparable journeys. Fans of GODSPEED's previous work will be very happy, and the curious might want to hop on board as well.