There’s that famous quote: “Where words fail, music speaks.” Instrumental music has never gone out of fashion, nor has it been what you would call a dominant trend, particularly in the world of rock, and yet, these days, there are different strains of wordless music that seem to suggest a growing appetite for something beyond spoken and sung language.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a Canadian instrumental collective. The group has been releasing records since 1997, but for chunks of those 20-plus years the group was inactive. The band released “Luciferian Towers” last year, a record that at times can suggest connections to Brian Eno, Maurice Ravel and Ennio Morricone. Subdued rhythmic figures repeat while hissing swells of feedback, trumpet blasts and string surges emerge from the sonic haze.
Some call it post rock, but others, understandably, wrinkle their noses at that genre designation. This is a rock band that draws on the structural principles of classical minimalism, valuing patterns, drones, mesmerizing textures and other factors that gain weight and momentum over extended repetition and duration. But where some minimalism steers clear of overt emotion, listen to the anthemic heft of “Bosses Hang Pt. III” off the new record, which achieves a kind of late-Romantic grandeur.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor performs at College Street Music Hall, 238 College St., New Haven, on Sunday, March 25, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $35. collegestreetmusichall.com.
Editor’s note: The original picture with this story was removed because it was not a picture of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
