Band:	Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Album:	All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling
Style:	Experimental rock
Release date:	December 1994
A review by:	Netzach

Disc I
01. Drifting Intro Open
02. Shot Thru Tubes
03. Three Three Three
04. When All The Furnaces Exploded
05. Beep
06. Hush
07. Son Of A Diplomat, Daughter Of A Politician
08. Glencairn 14
09. $13.13
10. Loose The Idiot Dogs
11. Diminishing Shine
12. Random Luvly Moncton Blue(s)
13. Dadmomdaddy

Disc II
01. 333 Frames Per Second
02. Revisionist Alternatif Wounds To The Hair-cut Hit Head
03. Ditty For Moya
04. Buried Ton
05. And the Hairy Guts Shine
06. Hoarding
07. Deterior 23
08. All Angels Gone
09. Deterior 17
10. Deterior Three
11. Devil's In The Church
12. No Job
13. Dress Like Shit
14. Perfumed Pink Corpses From The Lips Of Ms. Céline Dion

The mythic demo finally materialised. How does reality compare to legend?

The lost tapes of All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling from 1994 have long been one of the alternative and avant-garde scene's best kept secrets and greatest mysteries. Time and time again, fake copies and snippets of the real thing have popped up online, but this time around, it's the real deal, as confirmed by Godspeed You! Black Emperor themselves by releasing the record on Bandcamp. Efrim Menuck, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's main man, never intended for it to be released, as he felt it didn't at all represent his artistic vision for the band, and was actually intended as his final musical statement as his mid-20s were marked by an unstable life situation and disillusionment stemming from seeing the alternative acts he grew up admiring "selling out" by getting signed to major labels. Labels that, as illustrated in the Yanqui U.X.O. artwork, allegedly are part of business conglomerations stretching as far as the warmongering weapons manufacturing industry and beyond.

Now, don't go into All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling expecting anything near the level of the incredible F♯ A♯ ∞ that would follow three years later, as the few copies of demo tapes gained attention and prompted Efrim to gather a "small" band (of up to 18 people, according to the debut's liner notes; yes, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's member roster was at that time as anarchic as the politics fuelling their music) and create one of the finest albums ever recorded. Don't even go into it expecting something nearly as coherent (but ultimately disappointing) as the aforementioned Yanqui U.X.O., which would be the band's swan song until their reunion almost a decade later resulted in the sludge and drone metal-influenced albums leading up to their latest masterpiece G_d’s Pee At State’s End!

What you'll find here isn't even a “proper demo” much of the time. There are pieces of it that most definitely herald the excellence to come, there are pieces of it that herald the pseudo-Celtic punk sound of Godspeed You! Black Emperor side project Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, and there are pieces of it that herald the musique concrète of another side project, Set Fire To Flames; there are even sections sounding like there was just a lot of messing around, drunken monologues, and taping experiments going on.

Around 12 minutes into "Side A1" there's a speech about getting shit on by birds while a fat cop is dying, leading into a very pretty and soothing guitar plucking, with bass work reminiscent of the band's legendary debut album. It escalates into a punky noise rock riff before abruptly stopping and leading into another spoken-word section backed by discordant, screeching guitars. “Side A2” opens up with a barely-sung line repeating “I kill more time with this idiot song…” and goes on to play an instrumental indie rock riff for a while, before devolving into a hilarious speech about how you need to buy a pair of plastic sunglasses since they’re only $4, and if you also get a stupid haircut “or a nose ring”, “nobody will fuck with you … when you get scared on the bus.”

This demo is far from cohesive; it’s a patchwork of ideas, some good, some bad, some ugly. Listening to it is sometimes exhilarating, sometimes boring, but mostly just confusing. In some sense, Efrim succeeded in setting out what he wanted to do: create anti-music, or at least anti-rock. It is avant-garde as hell, and it points a big middle finger at any established conventions, but it is easy to see why Godspeed You! Black Emperor weren't too keen on releasing this as part of their official legacy. Still, it’s an important part of the entire post-rock movement (as well as beyond), and whether you’ll want to listen to it for its history, its music, or just out of curiosity, you’ll want to check it out. Maybe not all of its 70 minutes, but since “Side B2” ends with perhaps the most Godspeed You! Black Emperor-sounding section on the entire demo, you might want to stick around for its entirety.