OFF: godspeed you black emperor!

[K Henderson]

>Ok, can someone describe what these guys are like? I've seen
>many a message about them here, and now I see that they'll be
>making a stop locally.

Intense, dark, 'orchestral chamber music meets atmospheric heavy rock' by a
nine-member unit including multiple lines of guitar, bass, percussion, and
then violin and cello.  Often, slowly-building droney cadences covered by a
mix of simple leading statements sometimes on guitar, sometimes on violin,
sometimes on xylophone/glockenspiel/bells/whatever-the-hell-it-is.  The only
vocals are spoken word rantings about government corruption or whatever,
though they didn't use any of these live when I saw them.  These can be
diverting and I'm not sure what the point is anyway.

The 'songs' are usually multistage compositions that wax and wane gradually,
and reach intense wall-of-sound climaxes.  It's hardly 'fun' music, closer
to depressing, but gybe! is 'exciting' nonetheless.  Seems like it should be
used as the soundtrack to a film shot only in black & white, and if I had to
associate an ethnicity to the style, I'd say it 'sounds Jewish'.  Like I can
imagine watching Schindler's List to gybe!  But since they're French
Canadian, not a good chance any of them are Jewish, but then you never know.
And I saw them on Yom Kippur oddly enough.  And there had been a Yom Kippur
service going on upstairs in the same bldg. that gybe! was playing in.

Grakkl (FAA)