LIFT YOUR SKINNY FISTS LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN

Just as the ambient end of progressive electronic had Tangerine Dream's Zeit, just as the Canterbury scene had Soft Machine's Third, just as symphonic prog (infamously) had Tales From Topographic Oceans, so too did post-rock have Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. If there were ever any doubt that by the beginning of the 2000s a healthy cross- pollination was occurring between post-rock and classic prog, Godspeed You Black Emperor proved it by putting out a double album of four tracks, each the length of a vinyl side, nearly three decades after the Topographic Oceans controversy made such an approach highly risky in a rock context.

It's also perhaps the band's best work, combining some of their most evocative and intriguing pieces of found audio, the dark post-apocalyptic post-rock style they had developed on their preceding releases, and presenting a bit more variation in the sound - some parts of the album approach dark ambient territory, whilst some of the louder crescendos represent the most complex and musically busy material the band would ever record. On the whole, the epic structure of the album is absolutely perfect for Godspeed's style - they are, at the end of the day, a band all about creating vast rubble-strewn soundscapes for the listener to lose themselves in and explore. One of the essential post-rock releases.