Constellation Records
CD • COMPACT DISC • CD • COMPACT DISC • CD • COMPACT DISC • CD • COMPACT DISC •
Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Thee - Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything - New CD
Regular price
$ 6.00
CD • COMPACT DISC • CD • COMPACT DISC • CD • COMPACT DISC • CD • COMPACT DISC •
A Silver Mt. Zion is a group led by founding Godspeed You Black Emperor! guitarist Efrim Menuck, together with other Godspeed members Sophie Trudeau and Thierry Amar.
To some extent, A Silver Mt. Zion was born out of a desire on the part of the Godspeed players to work in a smaller musical ensemble; in effect, to escape some of the constraints that often accompany writing and arranging music democratically with nine musicians. As well, Efrim simply wanted a vehicle to realize some of his own musical ideas that would not necessarily work well within the context of Godspeed.
For the band's second and third records, the line-up expanded to six players, including Rebecca Foon, Ian Ilavsky and Jessica Moss, and the band re-named as The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band. Scott Levine Gilmore joined the band for Horses In The Sky, and now there were seven.
In 2010, the band was reduced to a quintet : Efrim, Thierry, Jessica, Sophie and new member David Payant.
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999. Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the other group in which all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play). Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass.
In the late oughts, SMZ pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected).
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummeling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centerpiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic.
This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing.
Thanks for listening.
In the late oughts, SMZ pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected).
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummeling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centerpiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic.
This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing.
Thanks for listening.
credits
released January 21, 2014
PERSONNEL
Thierry Amar – Contrebasse, Electric Bass, Plucked Piano, Vocals
Efrim Manuel Menuck – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Mellotron, Vocals
Jessica Moss – Volin, Plucked Piano, Vocals
Sophie Trudeau – Violin, Plucked Piano, Vocals
David Payant – Drums, Organ, Vocals
Recorded by Greg Norman at Mansion Vibes in Studio B12, Valcourt, Quebec.
Mixed by Greg Norman and SMZ at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango, Montreal, Quebec.
Mastered by Harris Newman at Greymarket, Montreal, Quebec.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Québec, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Nous reconnaissons l’appui financier du gouvernement du Québec, du gouvernement du Canada et des radiodiffuseurs privés du Canada.
PERSONNEL
Thierry Amar – Contrebasse, Electric Bass, Plucked Piano, Vocals
Efrim Manuel Menuck – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Mellotron, Vocals
Jessica Moss – Volin, Plucked Piano, Vocals
Sophie Trudeau – Violin, Plucked Piano, Vocals
David Payant – Drums, Organ, Vocals
Recorded by Greg Norman at Mansion Vibes in Studio B12, Valcourt, Quebec.
Mixed by Greg Norman and SMZ at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango, Montreal, Quebec.
Mastered by Harris Newman at Greymarket, Montreal, Quebec.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Québec, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Nous reconnaissons l’appui financier du gouvernement du Québec, du gouvernement du Canada et des radiodiffuseurs privés du Canada.
