Published by Chronogram online on August 30, 2013 and in print shortly thereafter
Godspeed You! Black Emperor has always been something of an enigma, the band’s music a complex triumph of sonic, mind-melting exploration, haunting samples, and inspired composition. After a seven-year hiatus, GYBE reunited two years ago for a series of shows, and on Thursday, September 20, they’ll perform at Basilica Hudson, a venue ideally suited for the group’s epic vibe.
GYBE has been hailed as champions of a genre called post-rock, but whatever post-rock means is anyone’s guess; it’s an application most often bestowed on groups for whom no other location in a record shop’s filing system would make sense. There are traditional rock ‘n’ roll instruments in GYBE, though the guitars and drums are often used in a darkly classical milieu. And with albums like the stunning Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven unfolding like a film soundtrack, or movements in an epic symphonic piece, where the hell else other than the chin-stroking, intellectually stimulating post rock section would a record shop keep it?
Rumors abound that GYBE has been recording new material, though at present their last album remains Yanqui U.X.O., the group’s politically charged 2002 full-length that featured a cover photograph of bombs tumbling out of a military plane, samples of then-President George W. Bush, and artwork linking major record labels to arms manufacturers. Heady stuff, but the music has always been grandiose and emotional, the stuff of fantasy and nightmares. Think the darkness and odd swathes of light in the music of the Velvet Underground, John Cage, and Swans. And, thanks to Karl Lemieux, a member of the group whose primary responsibility at live shows is bathing the stage in abstract experimental film projections, a GYBE performance is a totally immersive, singular affair.
They may not have a new album on the way, but it’s not unusual to hear new material at a GYBE show. Just don’t expect the crowd to sing along, whether they know the songs or not, because aside from the aforementioned samples, GYBE’s music is strictly instrumental.
Since regrouping, GYBE have rekindled a relationship with All Tomorrow’s Parties, the UK-based promoter behind I’ll Be Your Mirror, a worldwide series of small festivals with days curated by musicians. The group’s date in Hudson was planned as something of a warm-up to an appearance at the annual US version of I’ll Be Your Mirror, originally planned to be held in Asbury Park, NJ. But last month it was announced that the festival had been moved to New York City, and, with the exception of a few artists, would keep its lineup intact. After performing in Hudson and New York City, GYBE will continue their tour through the South and Midwest until mid-October, when they’ll presumably steal away into the night refusing to confirm whether a new album will ever materialize.
Basilica Hudson, a hollowed out 19th-century factory on Front Street, is a few dark turns off of Hudson’s main hub, Warren, on the waterfront next to the train station. The mammoth stone-faced industrial building, which has been the site of performances by such art-rock luminaries as Patti Smith and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, is dimly lit and unheated, giving it a sense of the medieval. The various anterooms and vaulted gothic ceilings with intricately laced beams provide the perfect acoustics for GYBE’s atmospheric ebbs and echoes.
Showing posts with label Chronogram Magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chronogram Magazine. Show all posts
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Freeze Frame
Originally published by Chronogram Magazine on October 29, 2009
While rock ‘n’ roll is found in the rhythms that move feet, and the singers that reach deep into one’s soul, there’s no denying it’s also a visual medium.
But while MTV ushered in the video age, rock ‘n’ roll photography is as old as the music itself, and Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present(2009, Knopf), a new book by part-time Warwick resident Gail Buckland, seeks to bring attention to the photographers rather than the subjects themselves.
“It was actually a friend’s idea,” says Buckland, who has written and collaborated on 11 previous books of photography. “He just said, ‘There’s not a great book that looks at the image of rock.’ I realized he was correct; almost every collection of photographs is really about who is in the image, rather than who took the image. My intention was to really bring this group of photographers from history into the pantheon because of the merit of their work.”
While some photographers like Annie Leibovitz and Bob Gruen have become well known for shooting iconic rock ‘n’ roll photographs (included in Who Shot: Liebovitz’s images of Bruce Springsteen and Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, and Gruen’s photos of Kiss and John Lennon), others in the book aren’t quite household names. But even so, Buckland says they played a pivotal and often unheralded role in the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll in the mid 1950s.
“This is a bipartite revolution,” Buckland says. “The music alone really couldn’t do it. It really needed images. It’s the pictures the kids responded to in terms of how they dressed or wore their hair.”
Who Shot Rock & Roll sees legendary shots like Gered Mankowitz’s 1967 image of Jimi Hendrix and Astrid Kirchherr’s stark 1960 pictures of the pre-Fab Beatles in Hamburg sit comfortably alongside lesser-known images from the inception of rock ‘n’ roll right up through the present.
And because the book focuses on the photographer rather than the star, rock is also gloriously represented by images of fans of everyone from the Smiths (Ian Tilton) to P. Diddy (James Mollison).
Of all the photographs in the book, the one that perhaps shows the most joy found in rock was taken by Walter Sanders. In the 1955 image, an integrated crowd at the Brooklyn Paramount is in the throes of ecstasy at Alan Freed’s Easter Rock ’n’ Roll Show. But seen among the grinning faces of teenage rebellion is a pair of fathers, one looking stunned, the other nauseated.
Buckland won’t say whether she has a favorite photograph in the book, though she does recall being inspired by the work of Don Hunstein as a teenager, especially his image of Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo arm in arm on West Fourth Street. “Just on a personal level, I remember having The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan propped up on my bedroom wall, and I remember thinking, ‘I want to go where they’re going,’” she says. An outtake of the session features in the book.
The book arrives at roughly the same time as an accompanying photographic exhibit, which continues at the Brooklyn Museum through January 31.
While rock ‘n’ roll is found in the rhythms that move feet, and the singers that reach deep into one’s soul, there’s no denying it’s also a visual medium.
But while MTV ushered in the video age, rock ‘n’ roll photography is as old as the music itself, and Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present(2009, Knopf), a new book by part-time Warwick resident Gail Buckland, seeks to bring attention to the photographers rather than the subjects themselves.
“It was actually a friend’s idea,” says Buckland, who has written and collaborated on 11 previous books of photography. “He just said, ‘There’s not a great book that looks at the image of rock.’ I realized he was correct; almost every collection of photographs is really about who is in the image, rather than who took the image. My intention was to really bring this group of photographers from history into the pantheon because of the merit of their work.”
While some photographers like Annie Leibovitz and Bob Gruen have become well known for shooting iconic rock ‘n’ roll photographs (included in Who Shot: Liebovitz’s images of Bruce Springsteen and Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, and Gruen’s photos of Kiss and John Lennon), others in the book aren’t quite household names. But even so, Buckland says they played a pivotal and often unheralded role in the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll in the mid 1950s.
“This is a bipartite revolution,” Buckland says. “The music alone really couldn’t do it. It really needed images. It’s the pictures the kids responded to in terms of how they dressed or wore their hair.”
Who Shot Rock & Roll sees legendary shots like Gered Mankowitz’s 1967 image of Jimi Hendrix and Astrid Kirchherr’s stark 1960 pictures of the pre-Fab Beatles in Hamburg sit comfortably alongside lesser-known images from the inception of rock ‘n’ roll right up through the present.
And because the book focuses on the photographer rather than the star, rock is also gloriously represented by images of fans of everyone from the Smiths (Ian Tilton) to P. Diddy (James Mollison).
Of all the photographs in the book, the one that perhaps shows the most joy found in rock was taken by Walter Sanders. In the 1955 image, an integrated crowd at the Brooklyn Paramount is in the throes of ecstasy at Alan Freed’s Easter Rock ’n’ Roll Show. But seen among the grinning faces of teenage rebellion is a pair of fathers, one looking stunned, the other nauseated.
Buckland won’t say whether she has a favorite photograph in the book, though she does recall being inspired by the work of Don Hunstein as a teenager, especially his image of Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo arm in arm on West Fourth Street. “Just on a personal level, I remember having The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan propped up on my bedroom wall, and I remember thinking, ‘I want to go where they’re going,’” she says. An outtake of the session features in the book.
The book arrives at roughly the same time as an accompanying photographic exhibit, which continues at the Brooklyn Museum through January 31.
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