Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Miesha & The Spanks, and Mustafa Rafiq
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! // Constellation Records
I’ve put off getting to this review for weeks, because a Godspeed record isn’t something you can just casually listen to when you’re isolated at home with other people. True to my suspicions, the album is a harrowing and titanically emotional listening experience, far from casual background noise, despite the fact that it contains a fair bit of that as well.
Truly a monumental offering, full of storm and stress and clearly informed by the apparent breakdown of society amidst the rising tide of pandemic and global fascism, the sprawling 2 LP set is full of mammoth, contrasting themes that reflect the relentless global conflict that seems to be currently at a point of ultimate crisis.
There are several moments of profound and stunning gorgeousness here, passages and themes of such extreme and elegiac delicacy that the heart breaks to hear them, juxtaposed against titanic riffs and military cadences that threaten to swallow them whole. It doesn’t take a deep thinker to see the reflection of current world dynamics writ large in the musical themes expressed on the album, but it’s the particular genius of Godspeed that they are able to capture so adeptly in music the tension, paranoia and disillusionment that afflicts any reasonable, sensitive person faced with the current global climate.
Beyond that, this is so clearly a message of hope from a band that still believes victory is possible. I’m reminded of the huge, swelling passages that typified the Romantic Era in music - AT STATE’S END! could very well be used as the soundtrack to a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, and I was continually struck by just how much of the music contained here evokes the grand themes and intense emotional capacities of that era in art. This is classical music for the modern age, all-encompassing and reckoning with grand human themes on a level that is both sublime and visceral in equivalent measures. 25 years on in their career and AT STATE’S END! finds this outfit is as vital, as relevant and as militant as ever, still fighting the good fight and spitting beauty back at the ugliness that surrounds them.
- Shaun Lee
Miesha & The Spanks
Singles EP // Saved By Vinyl
There has been so much pressure this year and it doesn’t seem to stop building. Piling up on my shoulders. When I chose this album, I was experiencing a funk. A funk I’ve been in for most of this year and not the good kind. I can’t handle hearing the news anymore as it makes my blood pressure rise. I can’t even look at FB anymore… I took the first step and deleted it from my phone for my mental health and it’s helped immensely. I want something real. We’re in a time where people are turning on each other over a difference of opinion. We got lost along the way and forgot to live. We forgot how to be respectful to each other. We forgot how to be kind. We forgot how to treat each other with dignity. We forgot how to love. Well I don’t think I’m the only one feeling pushed to their breaking point. Music is my medicine and it’s all I have to soothe me right now.
So I needed something to put the fire back in my spirit. Something motivating, and a little angsty. Some riot grrrl garage rock sound to revive my broken spirit. Naturally the new single “I Want Fire” by Miesha & The Spanks was just what the doctor ordered. The new Singles EP just dropped on April 16th and I must say it’s a killer follow up to 2018’s LP Girls, Girls, Girls. An album which was highly acclaimed being produced by Danny Farrant of The Buzzcocks.
I think I found my personal soundtrack or theme for 2021 so far through with this one. Or at least it’s resonating with me and getting me through my days. Each day can be a battle.
Let’s have a little history lesson…
Miesha & The Spanks are from Calgary, Alberta. Consisting of Miesha Louie who shreds on guitar and does vocals fronting this dynamic duo. Then we have Sean Hamilton who takes care of the rowdy raunchy drums! This latest Singles EP is a collection of songs influenced by immediate life changing effects of the lockdown. Produced by Leeroy Stagger at the Rebeltone Ranch in Lethbridge. It’s loud and yet crispy. Fuzzy and crunchy and will make you want to burn something, break something or drive really fast.
The EP starts off with an unplugged around the campfire sound. Then you get a kick in the face. You get to feel the heat of “I Want Fire”. A spicy little number that’ll stir your embers and re-ignite the flames inside you! It’s the heat in your seat.
“Don’t you wanna let it out!” I need to let it out though in a constructive way of course. I used to do that through band practice and playing live. Now I just annoy my family and play the banjo. Atleast my cat Ginger likes to hear me play the banjo. He’ll curl up on the couch next to me… He’s a cool cat!
Make sure to check out the wild video for “Wanna Feel Good!” Shot artistically as minimalist but it packs that punch! Visually appealing. This song was the ear worm for me with it’s fuzzy warmth and yet it’s hard as fuck! The lyrics I feel are very relatable. I’m tired of feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and exhausted. I wanna feel good. Must find new coping strategies of the non destructive sort. No more bread. No more sugar.
“Unstoppable” offers some nice piano hammering and a good message to listen to your heartbeat and not the voices in your head. Definitely taking that advice. Your head will steer you wrong. Your heart doesn’t or shouldn’t. I learnt to drop out of my head and into my heart. The fact that you and I keep pushing forward moving through this pandemic. We really are pretty resilient and definitely unstoppable!
Thank you Miesha & The Spanks for being the fuel to my fire. It helped me to rise up out of my funk and feel like myself again. Music really is my medicine!
Love Always,
Green Noreen
Mustafa Rafiq
If I Were A Dance // Pseudo Laboratories
If anyone has been around Edmonton’s music scene for a while, it is highly likely you have had a run in with Mustafa Rafiq - not necessarily Mustafa himself perhaps, but maybe the shows that he has put on, the artists he has brought to town, or any of the cross-disciplinary works he has done in theatre and dance (heck, I even met him in the context of improv theatre back in high school). Mustafa Rafiq is an Edmonton-based interdisciplinary artist who has played a significant role in the ambient/noise community here as well as in the breadth of the acts he has worked with. In the past, he has performed under the name Family Injera, but with the release of If I Were A Dance, Mustafa began to bear his own name in music after being confronted with emergency surgery on his hand from an accident at home, which had him absolutely terrified for his future in music and had him contemplating a transformation of his work moving forward. If I Were A Dance was released by Pseudo Laboratories on April 2nd, 2021.
The record is split in two halves. Side A is a collaborative work between Mustafa and the poet Dwennimmen (aka. Shima Aisha Robinson) under the umbrella title “From Foreign.” Dwennimmen is a notable poet in Edmonton’s poetry community, with her work expanding between Jamaica and Canada as well as breaching academic and religious institutions that have impacted her life. “From Foreign” was a commission from New Music Edmonton for their Solstice Special, where they paired three poets with three sound artists and allowed them to do as they please. “From Foreign” is composed of three poetic movements: “Triumph,” “Rebuttal,” and “Priceless.” “Triumph” confronts the alienation from historical kinship through the motions of academic halls, culminating in Dwennimmen’s acclamation of her bachelor of arts. “Rebuttal” confronts the religious symbolic passages through motions like baptism in the inauguration of a person’s life as “the damning proof of voluntary belonging…” And “Priceless” confronts this same notion of existential legitimation on the basis of bureaucratic, alienating institutions, this time turning our attention over to the fictions of citizenship in light of colonial strife severing life in order to prioritize imperial notions of sovereignty over life. Mustafa’s efforts through these moments sought to cradle her words, using sax, bowed guitar, bells, synths and birdsong.
Side B is also a collaborative work, this time between Bhuyash Neupane and Mustafa. Prior to this performance, the duo had worked previously as part of Holy Drone Travellers, an ambient music group that disbanded recently. “Live at Latitude 53” was a performance the duo conducted while working with some of Suyash Neupane Kumar’s poetry (Bhuyash’s brother). The poem was delivered in Nepali, the poet’s native tongue. Mustafa has noted this work as an opportunity to touch base with Bhuyash, who lives a very different kind of life from him, insofar as he still has to deal with the precariousness of getting permanent residency in Canada. The piece speaks to that act of congregation in the middle of the pandemic, to take that time to see each other, cook for one another, watch a film together, and then craft together this performance.
As a whole, If I Were A Dance is a cohesive reflection on the communal work that has informed Mustafa Rafiq’s efforts as an artist in connecting communities and artists together, crafting sounds that cross disciplines, and creating oscillating layers that bring to life vignettes of different lives. The work in If I Were A Dance is Mustafa’s attempt at uplifting the voices of other artists he admires, while taking on the challenge to produce an album out of this work. In many respects, this is also Mustafa’s debut as a musical producer which hopefully lends itself to future work, collaborations, and experimentations by this prolific artist.
- Simone A. Medina Polo
