If your listening tastes tend to alternate between Tortoise-type bands and Ennio Morricone-style soundtracks, plan on making a trip to your local shop for this sucker. Done on a massive scale, the album is a mind-bending blur of desert heat-haze sonics, churning and twanging guitars and palpably expectant atmosphere. Spoken word passages -- hell, dialogue passages -- add to the narrative nature of the disc. There are peaks and valleys and climaxes and exposition, and every moment has the sort of electrically charged feeling the air gets before one of those massive thunderstorms that makes the six o'clock news. The Montreal ensemble has added new material to two of the three cuts on the disc; "East Hastings" and "Providence" both receive new elements, while the unchanged "The Dead Flag Blues" is striking sans modification. Each of the three worked is apparently divided into distinct, individually- named movements, but as Kranky doesn't appear to have sent us a CD booklet, I can't really comment on them. Regardless, listening to f#a#(infinity symbol) whilst alone in a darkened room is likely to have a transformational effect on you. When you're ready, check out the group's live show, which incorporates film projectors to further tweak your senses.
Godspeed You Black Emperor f#a#(infinity symbol) Kranky CD
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