F# A# ∞

Godspeed You Black Emperor! (I like punctuating it that way I don't care how the band does it) is a band that immediately interested me. This might sound weird, as many have said that this is a band that is hard to get into, but by the time I found out about this band, I was already in the mindset to understand this kind of thing. The music on this album is very visual and sure, it conjures images of a post-apocalyptic world and I thought it was the greatest thing ever at first, but the more I listened to it, the less vivid the images became. I think this is because there is very little real substance to the music here and the concepts are extremely vague. The reason people think it is so deep is because of the attatchments they make between dynamics and eeire soundscapes (not to mention the vague spoken word parts). To enjoy this music to it's maximum potential requires a suspension of disbelief, and I think people who are willing and let the connections their minds will make and vague images flow are able to enjoy this album more than those who think about it too much. At first I was able to do this, but eventually I only heard the dynamics and instrumentation, the images and connections were gone. I think the band is partially to blame for this because of the lack of real substance in their music, but the listener can make this music very powerful if he or she is in the right mindset. I now am sometimes able to get in that mindset, but often I can only hear the music itself and not picture anything but vague irrelevant slivers of images forced by my will to enjoy the music like I used to. Add one star if you are able to have that mindset, subtract one if you aren't. Right now, I'm somewhere in between.