Godflesh - "Christbait Rising" (live video, 1990)

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Apologies for the downtime yesterday – the site has been growing at an incredible pace, which has been overloading the server. A good problem to have, for sure, but it came to a head yesterday, and I’ve been up the whole night dealing with it. It’s about 6AM now, and I’m off to grab a little sleep before the daily grind.

I leave you with this – incredible footage of Godflesh, live in Schorndorf, DE, on March 30, 1990. The song is “Christbait Rising”. Streetcleaner is four and a half months old. No breakbeats, no major label deal, no human drummer, no Jesu yet. Just two guys, a drum machine (and I thought I was biased against drum machines live? Perhaps I should reconsider), and the entire weight of the VHS-poisoned ’80s collapsing into some basement. Justin Broadrick’s gauntness brings to mind Ian Curtis. Godflesh as the cyborg reincarnation of Joy Division? Amidst such bleakness, G.C. Green’s strap is an odd splash of color. I’ve listened to Godflesh for over 15 17 years (I just remembered my first Godflesh CD – Pure, in a longbox!) and have seen plenty of promo photos – I was quite the Broadrick obsessive back in the ’90s – but I have never seen Godflesh in motion. This is blowing my mind.

Also blowing my mind is the Redux Edition 2-disc reissue of Streetcleaner that recently came out. I have not consumed it so much as it has consumed me. I will write at length on it later. Since Streetcleaner is so personal to me, exploring the Redux Edition feels like going up the river to find Kurtz in the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now (also called Redux, incidentally). The journey leaves no one unscathed.