Review Summary: Ladies and gentlemen, "all lights fucked on the hairy amp drooling"
Yes, it is real.
Those four words would most certainly be welcome to hear for...goodness, almost 22 years. Well, I'm not an expert in terms of how music sharing evolved online. The harsh truth is that there was this massive cornerstone of how post-rock came to be and how one of it's biggest acts came to be, this one band that would go on to produce the essentials of the genre during the turn of the millennium.
I said, I said, the fat cop had died.
Godspeed You Black Emperor! in 1994 was ideas tossed around, strips of acoustic, waves of amplifier. What might be a controversial statement from me but the influence of My Bloody Valentine is at times oddly present here, in the sense of purposeful degradation. But mostly, the album consists of tiny melodies, small pieces of inspiration and construction. It would be three years later that the band would finalize the vision of the band towards the genre it would inspire. Punk rock, according to the band.
This tape is the splitting point of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Set Fire To Flames, the former band being much more prominent in acoustic capacity than the other. It is very great to have it with us at long last, especially since it came close to leaking in 2013 and it would have been a great service to the music community, the demand was indeed so great it overwhelmed the owner of the tape and chose not to release it. So, nine years later after an alleged break of trust not to share it online (I do hope the person who ripped the tape has not seen any consequences of this!) we eventually can listen to this tape officially released by the still-alive project of the two directions mentioned.
The tape has two sides, many songs consist of multiple ideas that do not flow into one another, on sides you specifically have maybe the experimentation of movements, as for example 'Dead Flag Blues' is in itself smaller songs or segments. This time however, the movements are mostly less than six minutes. A concept that works surprisingly well for the ride. 'Diminishing Shine' is one of these songs, beginning with guitar, cutting off to static and then playing a male voice telling the listener to get themselves a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses for $4.00. I also would like to point out that here we can hear the greatest distinction of the February 2022 leaked version and the Bandcamp re-release. Yes, the voice is on left or right channel in both versions.
This creates another mystery, how long did the band hold their own recorded version of the tape? Regardless, I would gesture you to listen to the two versions, both have seen unwanted degradation in some elements and maybe there may come a version that combines the two to form lossless versions.
I am my daddy's daughter and I'm my mommy's son.
The tape at times comes as something that really was inside the band and meant for family and members. There are some things that cannot be placed to any present motif in any of the living projects
of this hotel2tango spectacle.
for sixty-nine and a half seconds, "all lights ***ed on the hairy amp drooling" is full of drafts, full of half-songs that form pretty punk motions, post-rock movements that can only make you puzzle in front of a whiteboard on what element grew to form the basis of songs like 'Monheim' or 'Moya', resemblance to what the band currently persists as is very minimal. As an artifact, the mystique of each song and each element intertwining, like the drone on 'Ditty For Moya' on top of acoustic guitar gives essential clues on what grew and shriveled. It is fundamental to the later intrigue the band gathered in the 90's.
To post-rock, the tape is legendary and still presents an experience worthy to the fans of the genre, with sullen disintegrating elements on top of static (like all of the 'Deterior' -movements), instruments one can barely speculate the existence of with energies that shift song to song. There might be the weakest part on the tape, the songs flow seldom in conjunction with the energy expected. Bypassing that, in it's entirety this punk prototype for post-rock has rocked the media and the fans in how unexpected but understandable the contents of the tape are. It is only fitting that the tape ends with a song that represents the most basic form of punk rock.
