Well, first of all, let’s just give a round of applause to this year’s Polaris Prize winning band, Godspeed You! Black Emperor – they were up against some stiff competition, and we here at Mixtape are sure it wasn’t an easy voting process for any of the judges.
Celebrating their achievement, this week’s soundcheck is here to introduce you to the eight musicians making up Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Their story begins a long, long time ago in 1994 when the original formation of the band first got together to make their lengthy and unique sounds. In 1997, the band (originally punctuated Godspeed You Black Emperor!) released their debut album titled F♯ A♯ ∞. The album really played with the definition of “prog-rock” as the band opted to avoid traditional lyrics and used lengthy movements and dynamic segments instead. After some mild successes with the album the band announced an indefinite hiatus in 2003 citing that members of the band were looking to pursue other musical interests.
Once some time had passed, the rumour on the street was the band had broken up. But in 2010 they reformed proving everyone wrong and in October of 2012 they released their fourth, and Polaris Prize winning album, Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!. The album that seemingly came out of nowhere features experimental tracks while the band toys with genres such as ambient and noise and quickly became a cult classic, collecting devoted fans across the country.
The thing about Godspeed is that this band takes a certain amount of pride functioning outside of the traditional music industry standards. They create music that isn’t confined to a standard length of listening time and their tunes are more about the specific instrumental sounds rather than melody. And when it comes to their cult-like following of fans, well they approach them a little differently too, having been known to inconspicuously sell records prior to release to the most devoted fans at shows.
Keeping with their true counter-culture attitudes, the band released a statement, in which they thank everyone for the award, and then waved their collective fingers of shame (much like your mother does) at the unnecessary audacity of the ceremony.
“…We’ve been plowing our field on the margins of weird culture for almost 20 years now, and “this scene is pretty cool but what it really fucking needs is an awards show” is not a thought that’s ever crossed our minds,” the band writes in their statement.
The band continues on to say they are going to use the $30,000 prize money to set up a program so that prisoners in Quebec can have access to musical instruments if they need them. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good use of $30,000.
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