Godspeed You Black Emperor! - London Scala - 22/11/00
5/5
By: Toby L
The Scala in London's Kings Cross is a fine venue. The sound is filtered around the best part of 1,000 people with the clarity and depth often left desired at other locations. However, there is one downfall for the punter - arrive late and don't expect a place in the stalls. Yep, rockfeedback suffered such incompetence on our part, being relegated to the top balcony of the building. Bearing in mind that the Scala has about, hmm, eight balconies located in different parts, that really is something.
However, although your legs may ache as you climb the stairs to get to it, the top balcony is actually the most interesting place to view a show at this venue. It overlooks the stage and lighting stupendously, whilst also providing a large, curved bar, housing facilities to even supply food to be consumed in large, comfortable booths slotted into the walls. It's just all too much. It even has a couch for people to laze away on whilst watching the concert, others prefering to dangle on to the hopelessly heavy velvet cutains. All allowing this four-night residency for Godspeed... to be truly special - I'd be pleased, to say the least.
A talking point for many tonight is the set GYBE! have chosen to play - it's two and a half hours long. Sounding gruelling, fears of minds wandering during the show are lifted as a howling violin and soothing cello swoop around the venue before a futher seven members of the instrumental band make their way onstage. Five choosing to pick up guitars of different kinds and sizes decide to either sit or stand, whilst the two remaining musicians sit around at the back bashing their way through various pieces of percussion, including a drumkit, almost consisting purely of a couple of cymbals and bass-drum. With such an awesome amount of activity at all times existing in the spectators' eyes onstage, you'd expect a show, which is what they aim to deliver.
A screen behind allows projections of eerie buildings and scrappy writing illustrating the name of their current album 'Levez-Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas to Heaven' to create further movement on the stage and the colouration remains minimalistic, tones only kept to a subtle collection of different shades; fittingly, the light-show provides a contrast to the music belting its way through the PA - which is like a sonic orchestra consisting of hundreds of players, equipped with guitar effects on pedals to ensure that distortion and feedback allow an over-powering and compelling, cosmic surge of sound to swill around in your head. Some people choose to rock to and fro, whilst others remain still: transfixed by the hypnotic and repetitive nature that some of the noises chirping their way through the speakers enforce upon listeners.
The show progresses - climaxes are reached twice before encore-breaks, where an enthralled and moved audience go berserk in an effort to bring them back onstage for another fix. Although their wishes are granted twice, the nature of the show is rounded off in a satisfying swaying of intertwining instruments, which pluck the notes that the crowd want to hear before they're beckoned off for the night - the band reserved to try and astound another capacity audience the next evening. The evidence here tonight proves that they won't have to try too hard to impress once again.
Artists in this article: Godspeed You Black Emperor!
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