YANQUI U.X.O.

Having reached a brilliant peak on the Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven double album, Godspeed You Black Emperor returned with a reconfigured sound on Yanqui UXO. Gone are the scratchy extracts of found audio shimmering in and out of focus which gave their preceding releases such a distinctive sound; this all- instrumental album seems to be a deliberate attempt to prove that the band could produce brilliant music without such tricks or chicanery.

And, of course, they can... but we already knew that from their preceding material, which was never as dominated by the audio samples as the band's detractors made it out to be. As it is, the album is pretty decent, but the atmosphere does lose a little something when the band are on their best behaviour and not getting up to tape-recorded mischief. Of the Godspeed releases to date (excepting the All Lights Fucked On the Hairy Amp Drooling tape, which pretty much nobody outside of the band has heard so I can't comment on it), I'd say this is the least essential. Still damn good... but Godspeed at their prime were so much more than this.