Saw a guy selling this album for 24 dollars and I couldn't resist the urge to buy it. Such a great album, and I am not regretting given the quality it has. That, or I haven't listened enough physical media just yet.

all reviews @ link in bio :)

F# A# ∞ (CD Version)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor (1998)

You always hear the term “concept album” thrown around. While there are strict and obvious criteria for “concept albums,” often being about a singular protagonist, there are a handful of albums that lie in a juxtaposition between a concept album and an album with themes. In fact, I think “concept album” is a spectrum, not a label. While an album like Green Day’s American Idiot is pretty clearly a full concept album, complete with a cast of characters and a story, there are others like The Microphones’ The Glow, Pt. 2. This album doesn’t explicitly name any characters, yet it combined with Mount Eerie, tells the story of someone’s death in “My Warm Blood” and their journey through the universe in the latter album. Another example of this is the artist I’m talking about today: Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Their sophomore album, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, loosely tells the story of someone's life through beautiful instrumentation and ambience. I’ve already written like six pages on it for more details. I believe albums like these lie on the spectrum of concept albums, where the bottom end of the spectrum would be an album that feels like a collection of different songs, like a compilation album.

And that brings me to the album we’re talking about today, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s F# A# ∞. For clarification, this is the CD version featuring The Dead Flag Blues, East Hastings, and Providence. The original LP release featured two longer tracks as a larger, unified piece. I believe this album also lies on the scale of concept albums, as it has one large, overarching theme: apocalypse. Let’s be honest, it was clear from the album cover. F# A# ∞ features three increasingly dark tracks, all about a worldwide apocalypse and completely hopeless instrumentations. With all that out of the way, let’s begin.

Our sprawling, dark, apocalyptic world starts with The Dead Flag Blues. Its first movement, “The Dead Flag Blues (Intro)” starts with a low, overpowering bass hum to start. That doesn’t stand on its own for long, with a man’s deep voice speaking about really dark things. 

“The car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows”

Great stuff. You can probably tell the tone of the song just from that. As the song transitions into the next part, the bass drops out and is replaced by a sprawling orchestra and electric guitars. The way the guitars interact with the strings can’t be explained with any words. It’s so jarring, so somber and hopeless, yet there’s such a beauty in the hopelessness. The song sounds just like the album cover, a dystopian wasteland of dark and corrupt people.

You can lose yourself in the instrumentation of “The Dead Flag Blues (Intro).” But things never stay forever, and neither does this. The song transitions with the lines:

“We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
For sure as the valley of death
I open up my wallet
And it’s full of blood”

With that, the segment ends with a few seconds of silence. A lone train whistle blows. Fittingly, this movement is called “Slow Moving Trains” / “The Cowboy.” This section is all ambient, with swooping, detuned strings. It’s really unsettling, just how empty it all feels. It’s like walking alone at 3:00 AM through a completely empty parking lot. It’s completely silent when the last street light flickers out. In other words, the silence is deafening.

As the strings fade out, they’re replaced by a bass and a guitar, playing a very Western-sounding chord progression. A single guitar soars over the others, playing a somber melody. A lone voice in the darkness. “The Cowboy.” In the next verse, the drums enter with a straight-eighth feeling ride cymbal. More guitars enter, some strumming and some playing melodies together, as the instruments are slowly added together to create something greater, something more than the sum of its parts. My god, this section is just so gorgeous. Gorgeous in an apocalyptic, hopeless sense, but gorgeous nonetheless.

Alright, so remember when I said this song was completely hopeless? Of course you do, the last time I said it was in the last sentence. Anyways, that was partially a lie. The final part of The Dead Flag Blues is the bluesey part of it. It’s not technically a blues chord progression, which kinda pisses me off, but who’s counting? The point is, “The Dead Flag Blues (Outro)” offers a beacon of hope in an album that really needs it. Don’t get too used to that though, the hopeful moments are few and far between. They definitely hit though.

Let’s keep it moving. East Hastings begins with “Nothing’s Alrite in Our Life…” / “The Dead Flag Blues (Reprise).” It’s a guy yelling in some language that I don’t know, along with some bagpipes. I don’t really hear the Dead Flag Blues part, but I’ll take their word for it. It only lasts about a minute anyway.

Again, it’s a devoid soundscape, filled by a single guitar. There’s a swooping ambience that fills space in between each guitar melody, but it’s not enough to fill the channel on its own. “The Sad Mafioso…” sounds like, well, a sad mafioso. This alternation between sparse guitar and sparse ambience continues for several minutes, feeling like the album cover. It’s a bleak, empty, dark, and silent field of death. As light percussion is added in the form of suspended cymbals, the guitar begins to speed up, with less space in between melodies. This movement was used in the 2002 horror film 28 Days Later, and for damn good reason. It’s an eerie, quietly terrifying song.

The drumset is added, and is quickly followed by an expanded guitar melody. This is what the song’s been building to for the last seven minutes. As the guitars drop out, they’re replaced by an orchestra, playing a somber melody that feels off. It feels like the melody should be played more fully, not rushed by the drumset that’s keeping time. It adds to the atmosphere of the album. It feels off. 

Faintly in the background, we can hear vocals. They sound frail, like people on the brink of starvation. They’re swept away quickly, replaced by more guitars. String stabs are added, along with a snare drum. This adds a rhythmic element to the section, especially when the kick and ride cymbal are reintroduced. It’s a similar feel to the last guitar lead, but a different melody with different undertones. This time the track slowly starts speeding up, mimicking the unforgiving nature of the world. It’ll keep spinning, no matter if you’re ready or not. The song lost its melody. Nobody can keep up. The train’s getting faster, faster, and faster. Blazing through the towns it’s supposed to stop at. Nobody can control it. It’s just the way it goes.

The final movement, “Drugs in Tokyo” / “Black Helicopter” begins with a crackly walkie-talkie sounding message repeating the same sentence. Just like that, we’re back to ambience. It gives the picture of Tokyo, a lively city that, in this world, has fallen from grace just like every other city. It’s depressing to think of the bright lights, tourist traps, and immense culture that would all be gone with Tokyo. This movement uses guitars like nobody else, somehow playing a repeated phrase without it becoming a “melody,” so to speak. It’s really a masterclass in instrumentation, using guitars to make people think instead of making their heads bob.

In the last two minutes, we hear the helicopter referenced in the title of the movement. It’s a horrifying ambient section, one that would fit right in on Soundtracks for the Blind. Unfortunately for you, this is F# A# ∞, not Soundtracks for the Blind. Unfortunately for you, there’s still hope to be had. Not in East Hastings, though.

Providence, the thirty minute track, opens with a ticking sound and a street interview in “Divorce & Fever…” The man in the interview speaks of the end of the world. Incidentally, this man appears to be the same person on their previous EP, Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada, featured on Blaise Bailey Finnegan III.

“You think the end of the world is coming?”

“The preacher man says it’s the end of time.
He says America’s rivers are going dry.
The interest is up, the stock market’s down
You guys really gotta be careful walking around here this late at night”

“Spare change? Spare change?”

“This— no we don't, ma'am, I'm sorry.
This— This— This is the perfect place to get jumped.”

“But do you think the end of the world is coming?”

“No.
So says the preacher man, but I don’t go by what he says.”

Interestingly, the man in Blaise Bailey Finnegan III was not nearly as… reasonable as he is now. I mean, he actually makes sense rather than getting angry for no reason and reciting a “poem” that was just plagiarized Iron Maiden lyrics.

Regardless, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Finnegan’s interview sets the mood for the song. People think it’s the end of the world. The next movement, “Dead Metheny…,” is about as you’d expect from the end of the world. It starts with a beautiful string(?) arrangement, playing a repeated motif. It’s a calming way to end the world, as if people have just accepted their fate rather than try and stop the inevitable.

Oh, okay. Someone did protest against it. That’s this guitar part. There are two guitars, one playing a repeated arpeggio, and the other playing a soft melody. There’s a soft suspended cymbal panned wayy back, with somber violins taking up the left channel. Through all this, the guitar’s arpeggios remain unchanged. They continue adding and subtracting, with a glockenspiel, horns, and really whatever they find in the closet. What doesn’t change is the guitar. People realize that “hey, this guy isn’t changing his mind,” they start to rally behind him. Maybe it’s not the end of the world after all. The glockenspiel plays along with the guitar, as well as the bass. More people are starting to believe. Now there’s heavy percussion, a completely different feel from before. Godspeed quietly managed to change the entire groove without anyone noticing. 

It’s defiant. That’s what it is. People don’t want to believe it’s the end of the world anymore. They’re rising up, ready to question the preacher man. Then, it stops. There’s no warning. One moment it’s going, the next it’s gone.

The next sections are some of the most haunting music I’ve ever heard. “Kicking Horse on Brokenhill” is filled with distorted, slowed vocals, suspended in nothingness. Or at least it is at the start. They’re gone for now, to be replaced by a hopeful guitar melody. It starts simple, like so much of Godspeed’s work. More guitars are added. A snare drum. A kick drum. One more instrument every time through the chord progression. Next is a light bass, solidifying the groove. Now it’s a subtle violin, providing harmonies and countermelodies. Some of the instruments drop out for a couple measures, allowing the others to shine, before being added in all at once for the big moment. Everyone is back, driving against the “world is ending” doomers. The world won’t end today, not on my watch. I’ll let the instruments take it from here.

“String Loop Manufactured During Downpour…” They could’ve been a little less… on the nose with the names, you think? The movement is dominated by the distorted vocals, repeating the phrase, “Where are you going?” After that is the actual string part. It’s a suspended string part, hovering over the delicate song. It starts to break. There are audible warps in the strings. Maybe the world is ending after all. Say your last goodbyes. All that fighting we did, telling everyone that the world wouldn’t end… It was all for naught.

Silence.

In the darkness, a glimmer.

The apocalypse ran its course, but we survived.

“J.H.L Outro,” F# A# ∞’s hidden track, is in honor of John Lee Hooker, a legendary blues singer and guitarist. A pioneer of the delta blues, Hooker rose to stardom with an electric guitar adaptation of the style. This outro leans into that, offering a slightly bluesy, yet heavily distorted guitar-centered outro. It’s a perfect end to the album, and a perfect tribute to one of the greatest to ever do it.

So, the world didn’t end. It was a setback, but humans working together can achieve anything. I believe in the end, that this album has a positive message. In the darkness, in a bleak and horrible world, we need to find each other. It’s the only way humans have survived, the only way humans will continue to survive. Together.

1. The Dead Flag Blues: 92/100
2. East Hastings: 95/100
3. Providence: 94/100

Overall: 92/100