F# A# ∞

Although my horizon in progressive rock music is relatively short and I am, to be sincere, close-minded concerning new artists, new music, new form of movement, acknowledging or thinking of introducing myself to Godspeed You Black Emperor! wasn't the same reticence manner I normally "use". In fact, immediately after I found myself in the perspective of trying them (recommended by a friend of mine), I accepted the thought. That it took some time for the thought to materialize, that's another story. Anyway, everything went for Godspeed entering my collection and my musical universe. And the decisive moment when I realized what a fabulous decision I've made came not after my first Godspeed You Black Emperor! experience, nor in the moment of listening, but right before everything, when I first held it in my hand, ready to play it. For I felt unimaginable shivers. Like solid divine dangerous, even deadly if not carefully handled material is inside it. The engraved name on the side, F#a#∞, terrified me. The image of the cover, slick, slumber, petrified me. The scribbling on the back, a personal shock. I felt its power, its force, and its nature through my rising rhythm of the heart. I looked at it with respect, fear, and will of devotion. But even this spirit(ual) thrill (which, by the way, really happened!; I'm not just playing with words) was nothing caompared to the listening hour, in which I've had so many euforical strokes in so many moments, I can't even remember. I was dead, but my spirit was blistering of emotions and immaterial sensations. The world, the definition of matter was dead and irrelevant, but music was alive, as the pulse was as well. I believe Schopenhauer said that "music is the objectivity of the desire, as immediate as the universe itself."

Godspeed You Black Emperor! defy time and space, weak matter and flawed skin, the sound that ends at a point and the impression that doesn't last long, the earthly "orthodox" dream, the casual flow of things, the conformist mood, the white sky and its God. The Godspeed move is so separate and so special. I'm not foreign from the modern of contemporary times, whether it is a "vintage" artist's work, perpetuated until now, or a new breeze of style and of music contribution. And the definition of modern has several universal way of presentation. Yet I can say that what Godspeed presented, imposed, elaborated and defined is something out of boundaries, something I've rarely seen or experienced. The fact that currently they are the only vision regarding the genre I have can perhaps reflect my words as something exaggerated, but I am almost certain that musically Godspeed you Black Emperor! are something revolutionary, out of dimension and purpose, beyond visualized scenery or a dreamed relation. Because the feeling of this cannot be deceiving or wrong. The feeling of insane euphoria, of divine quality and challenging to the extreme of the word manifestation. The sensation of different, in its most surreal and outstanding form. Godspeed speaks my language. And I adore it.

F#a#∞ is an amazing album (and an amazing debut, of course, making of the Godspeed expression knowledge from the beginning), a refined illustration and a conception that gives you goose bumps. For the universe of this is condensed into the moment of the end of all, an end that's nebulous, extremely subliminal, apocalyptic and heavily clustered. The world is no longer matter, there's only one fragment concentrated, music is everything, music is life and death, but it is music of lament, of shivering cold, of sophisticated slumber, and it's a message of chords that go into shaking the soul and killing the forms of exterior. It's all about signs, about spontaneous effect or long, everlasting echoes, of sadness and of perspective into darkness, of fallen grace in beautiful aromas of shadows, chimeras and immaterial thoughts. It's not the inferno, but the heaven of crows, of fluxes, of spirit that compose ideas. It's not the interpretations of doomsday, but it is the dynamic of something constantly directed towards nothingness. It is an image of a faceless portrait, of elements and outlines that don't belong to the definition we know, we accept, we live with. Metempsychosis. Emphases of shuddering scales. The cover sets a black reverie, suspense moment and a view in the abyssal phenomenon. And the narration engraves and expressive succumbed plane and a distressing scenario. The mood is prepared, maintained, raised and climaxed so fascinating, going shockwave after shockwaves. And then comes the master-music, the three chapters of the passionate dark play. In a sublime, refined, over-ecstatic and self-educated way, the Godspeed crew creates ample interpretation, with magic artistic moves, with understanding towards details and moves and everything that need distinguished reason, with correlations towards a work done for satisfaction, for self-realization and for long name of art written as brand and as motto; the utter sounds- the motive that creates the album's utopia; the manipulated, experimented, conserved sound that reaches towards the highest point possible. And they create the moment of slumber feat and squelched pain; and we look into the eye of the disaster and into the colorless flames of the silent apocalyptic movement. And it's completely marvelous. For they've captured the essence and the spirit; they've reached their message; they've made their way. And the rule is one.and the effects are so many. Infinity here is pure absurdity or pure revelation. Infinity is a single composition that leads into a lack of breath. And the true beyond is the moment of complete silence in Providence. Even that is part of the blood's flow. Even that strikes both the impossible and the reachable. A genuine poem this F#a#∞. An album of emotions, but of staggering quality and precise construction of darkness as well. A work of art that consumes the listener. There is a mood, of course, needed to make out of the experience pure shuddering delight. For this masterliness music is certainly not for anyone's moment of attraction, but a constant communication with the one in settled resonance. What I've expressed in this long paragraph (a special way I prefer in reviewing Godspeed You Black Emperor!) is what I have experienced (general descriptions are of course present, not leaving out the objective critic.). My way of seeing this outstanding F#a#∞. The way.

Masterliness.