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You seem to strive to keep the band out of the press. There's so little known about the members. Can you explain why you chose to avoid the press?
"it's true that we don't do all that many interviews but we're also not
hiding from or avoiding them--there is only so much to say about the often
mundane reality of playing in a rock band and after you start to repeat
yrself a dozen times the whole process becomes pointless and
self-defeating--like a tape looped recording of yourself that becomes less
and less genuine each time it is played back--the more you play it the more
the tape wears and slips and the less audible the words become--doing
interviews for print media is especially frustrating--answering the same
uninteresting questions--seeing your words taken out of context or completely
misundertood--words slotted into limited, fixed spaces assigned by
editors--tiny spaces that rarely provide enough room to talk about anything
interesting--always cutting ideas off prematurely before they have time to
seed and grow--radio interviews can be better--i think our guitarist Efrim said it
best--music journalism is a boring lazy pigpen--some people write about
music in interesting ways--most don't--some interviews have been great--a
couple of folks sitting in a room shooting the shit about whatever comes
up--a regular old conversation where everything breaks down and everyone
forgets what they were doing there in the first place--that's ideal"
The band name is lifted from a Japanese motorcyclegang. Was there a certain reason you chose that name?
"the name was taken from a documentary film made in the seventies about a
japanese motorcycle gang--bunch of bored teenagers hanging out on
streetcorners looking tough and smoking a lot of cigarettes--godspeed you
black emperor! is a damn fine name for a rock band as well--"
Your music is often compared to Enio Morricone's sound. When composing do you want to invoke a panorama? Or were you inspired by certain movies?
"never really understood the morricone reference myself outside of a few
sloppy slide guitar lines on the first record. Morricone seems to have been
fetishized lately in the rock press when discussing this supposed new
movement of people playing instrumental music--instrumental music has been
around forever--soundtrack music is an easy example of this and morricone is
undoubtedly one of the most commonly know composers of this kind of
music--he is to soundtrack's what the beatles are to rock--not to say that i
don't worship some of the stuff he does--that's what we mean when we call
music journalists lazy--someone reviews your record by making reference to
things that have come before so as to contextualize it and make it easier
for readers to situate in their record collections--other journalists pick
up on those referents and the whole thing spirals out of control--
--there ain't a lot in this world that excites me--fucking around with
sound-volume-texture-melody--this is something that sets me off for sure and
knowing that godspeed is around definitely gets me out of bed most
mornings--textural washes of sound without clumsy attempts by some vocalist
to fix a literal context with poorly written lyrics has a tendency to create
images in yr skull--images of your own--music explodes into millions of
different scenarios behind the eyelids--landscapes are common--building up a
landscape in your skull with washes of texture played at loud volumes with
some crapped out reverb and a little drunkeness is often fun--we have never
composed a piece of music to a particular set of images though--to reverse
the process and build the soundtrack first and then lay film projections on
top is infinitely rewarding--one day we hope to compose some movie music but
no one has come along with anything interesting--it's always bullshit like
oliver stone wanting to use some emotional godspeed string part in his film
about american football--you know--it's the crucial point in the game and
the coach calls a controversial play and the quarterback has just thrown the
ball and everything is in slow motion--slow pans on peoples faces all
twisted and tortured and there is a close up on the spinning football--and
then godspeed kicks in--I mean what the fuck is that--no thanks"
On top of that the little lyrics the record has, is lifted from 'incomplete movie from jail'. Don't you (or anyone else in the band) ever feel the urge to sing more?
"what do you mean sing MORE?--as far as i know, no one in this band has ever
attempted to sing--i think what you are talking about is the opening SPOKEN
monologue which is indeed taken from 'incomplete movie about jail', a movie
that our guitarist Efrim worked on for a while and then had to abandon for
the dirge of the monstrous godspeed rock dream machine--a lifestyle he
should probably give up soon so he can get back to working on his movie
---I doubt any of us will ever sing to the sounds of godspeed but we have
talked about writing a piece of music for a singer--if scott walker showed
up at the hotel2tango we probably wouldn't send him home--"
People often talk so highly of your concerts, some even say they prefer the live shows over the records. Do you yourself prefer playing live?
"it seems obvious to say that they are two separate things--there are things
I love and hate about each one--recording gives you the ability to be anal
and focussed and really shape and sculpt the sound--it allows you to do
things you could never do live like record the subtleties of your guitar
cabinet with a microphone in your mouth--playing live can often be an
unwieldy affair--totally fucking sloppy and drunken and loud and beautiful
and you can lose yrself in it completely and their is an otherworldy sense
of intensity with the ring of each fucking note--and you often take more
risks which is nice--I don't know--"
Touring is it a pain in the ass? Any funny or strange events taking place on the road?
"--someone called it a rolling nightmare of alcohol and depression--stick
thirteen paranoid and anxious reclusives in a metal bus for six weeks with a
lot of alcohol and things are going to get a little fucked up--there are
moments of beauty on tour which i look forward to--good italian coffee--the
soothing drone of the van and the constant wash of the countryside in the
rearview mirror--driving through the alps--playing in well organized squats
and meeting inspirational people--yeah touring can be good--we toured six
months out of the last year on no money which was a bit excessive and it
definitely took its toll on a few of us--the constant repetition and the
playing of the same music every night can be mind numbing and will
eventually make you hate the music you play which, in the long run, is
dangerous and will kill any chanced of your band staying together--"
What do you go for when you're in the studio, a *natural* sound?
"I don't think you can talk in absolutes here--what is a 'natural' sound--the
whole process of recording sound through a microphone onto a piece of audio
tape is completely artificial--i like the idea of using a lot of room mics
to capture the sound of the space you are playing in--we also record all our
pieces live while playing together--hopefully this has resulted in our
records translating the excitement and energy of a bunch of folks playing
music together in a room--to document a real event--a time and place that
you can imagine in your head--mistakes and all--so you can hear a chair creak
or someone cough or the violin player breathing nervously--"
http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/godspeed-you-black-emperor/godspeed-you-black-emperor/383/
Meer Godspeed You! Black Emperor op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/godspeed-you-black-emperor
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