Godspeed You! Black Emperor | East Hastings
Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "East Hastings" - how a Montreal band captured Vancouver's despair through a street preacher's sermon and 18 minutes of instrumental devastation.
Story Behind “East Hastings”
A Real Voice from a Blighted Street
The song opens with a sermon. Over mournful bagpipes, a Caribbean street preacher testifies about spiritual hunger versus material wealth. Her voice is grainy, field-recorded—not professional, not polished. Just real. For Vancouver residents in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that voice would have been immediately familiar. She was a presence on East Hastings Street, standing outside the Woodward’s building distributing flyers marked “Repent Sinner,” proclaiming the gospel to anyone who’d listen, regardless of how many people walked past her each day.
Efrim Menuck and David Bryant, guitarists for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, recorded her sermon on East Hastings Street. They brought it back to Montreal, to Hotel2Tango studio, and made it the entry point for a composition that would define post-rock as a genre: instrumental music that refuses to look away from human suffering.
The preacher, known to locals as Imogen, was documented not just by Godspeed. A documentary filmmaker named Brian Shipper also captured her testimony, describing her as lucid and cooperative, genuinely concerned about her community’s condition. Years later, when researchers tried to track down the original recording and its source, they found Imogen’s voice had become a cultural artifact—proof that even in the most marginalized spaces, someone was bearing witness.
Hotel2Tango and the Birth of Post-Rock
Godspeed You! Black Emperor had been accumulating material since 1993 when they began work on F♯ A♯ ∞ in 1997. The band had swollen to 15 members by then, unwieldy and chaotic. To create the debut album, they trimmed to 10 core musicians. The original recordings, made at Hotel2Tango in Montreal (a former loft studio that Efrim had established after the space’s landlord forced them to relocate), resulted in two 20-minute compositions on vinyl.
The CD re-release in 1998 was transformative. Kranky Records heard the album and immediately wanted to expand it for North American audiences. The band went back into Hotel2Tango and completely reworked the material, splitting what had been sprawling movements into three distinct pieces. East Hastings grew from portions of earlier recordings, expanded and reimagined, becoming nearly 18 minutes of instrumental narrative.
The song was never meant to be confessional or self-pitying. It was documentary—a sonic postcard from a place most people avoid. By incorporating the preacher’s actual voice, Godspeed refused to let listeners remain detached. This wasn’t music about suffering; it was music that contained real suffering within itself.
“East Hastings” Recording and Production Details
The Architecture of Dread
“East Hastings” is structured as three distinct movements, each with its own character. The opening section features the preacher’s testimony over sparse instrumentation. The second movement, titled “The Sad Mafioso,” shifts toward something more conventionally orchestral—strings rising, guitars entering with deliberate menace. The final movement incorporates what sounds like helicopter blades and deafening noise, suggesting surveillance or collapse.
The band used Hotel2Tango’s intimate setting to layer multiple instruments without overdoing the mix. Strings (Sophie Trudeau on violins and organ, Thierry Amar on electric and upright bass) were recorded with clarity and space. Drums (Aidan Girt, Timothy Herzog) were deliberately restrained in places, allowing silence to become as important as sound. Electric guitars (David Bryant, Efrim Menuck, Michael Moya) added texture rather than melody, functioning more like ambient color than traditional lead instruments.
The mix at Hotel2Tango was intentionally lo-fi, almost documentary in quality. Godspeed wasn’t trying to make the Downtown Eastside sound beautiful or palatable. They were trying to make it audible.
Becoming a Soundtrack to Dystopia
“The Sad Mafioso” section gained international exposure when director Danny Boyle used it in the 2002 film 28 Days Later. An edited version appeared in the opening sequence—empty London streets, a survivor walking through abandoned city—a visual metaphor for social collapse that mirrored exactly what Godspeed was exploring musically. Boyle later explained that he’d mentally cut the entire film to Godspeed’s music, treating them as his primary soundtrack even before official scores were created.
Godspeed didn’t license the track to 28 Days Later’s official soundtrack album, so the connection remains unofficial—the song exists in the film but not in its commercial afterlife. This somehow makes the association more powerful. The music became the film’s emotional DNA even though it couldn’t be commercially reproduced.
Notes About “East Hastings” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Release Date: August 14, 1997 (LP version), June 8, 1998 (CD version)
Duration: 17:58 (CD version; 3 movements)
Genre: Post-Rock / Instrumental / Drone / Experimental
Album: F♯ A♯ ∞ (debut studio album, track 2)
Recording Location: Hotel2Tango, Montreal
Re-release Producer: Kranky Records (expanded CD version)
Chart Performance: Ranked #45 on Pitchfork’s Top 100 Albums of the 1990s
Notable Usage: 28 Days Later (2002); Under the Banner of Heaven (TV series)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor “East Hastings” Era Band Details
Album Details
Album: F♯ A♯ ∞ (pronounced “F-sharp A-sharp Infinity”)
Release Date: August 14, 1997 (LP, limited release), June 8, 1998 (CD, expanded version)
Label: Constellation Records (LP), Kranky Records (CD)
Recording Location: Hotel2Tango, Montreal (Mile End district)
Recording Approach: Original 1997 recordings by band; 1998 CD version substantially expanded and reworked
Album Philosophy: Three long-form instrumental compositions with field recordings and spoken word samples; no traditional lyrics
Original Band Size: Trimmed from 15 members to 10 core members for album
Band Members/Personnel (East Hastings)
Efrim Manuel Menuck - Electric Guitars (also recorded field audio)
David Bryant - Electric Guitars (also recorded field audio)
Mauro Pezzente - Electric Bass
Michael Moya - Electric Guitars
Sophie Trudeau - Violins, Organ
Thierry Amar - Electric and Upright Bass
Aidan Girt - Drums
Timothy Herzog - Drums, Glockenspiel
Imogen - Field Recording (street preacher)
Karl Lemieux, Philippe Leonard - 16mm Projections (live performances)
Album Production Notes
Originally recorded as two 20-minute songs on LP; expanded to three compositions for CD re-release
Formed from material accumulated 1993-1997
Hotel2Tango served as both recording studio and performance venue
Field recordings central to album concept—captured real-world sounds integrated with composed music
Album gained cult following initially through word-of-mouth at live performances
Ranked #4 on The Wire’s 1998 critics’ poll
Pitchfork ranked album #45 on Top 100 Albums of the 1990s
Credited as foundational to post-rock genre despite band preferring “punk rock” description
Interesting Facts About “East Hastings”
The Preacher’s Unexpected Legacy
The woman heard at the beginning of “East Hastings” became an accidental historical figure. Decades later, researchers investigating the album’s field recordings discovered stories from people who remembered her from East Hastings Street. She was lucid, dedicated, and genuinely concerned about her community—not a caricature, but a witness. The film Jesus the Bookie, made years after the Godspeed recording, featured archival footage of her that documentary filmmakers had captured independently.
What’s remarkable is that she consented to her image being used, signing releases giving permission for her voice and likeness to be documented. In a city where homeless and marginalized people are often rendered invisible, she insisted on being heard. And through Godspeed’s album, her testimony became more widely heard than most sermons ever are.
The Film That Used the Song Without Owning It
Danny Boyle structured 28 Days Later entirely around Godspeed’s music—he’s stated explicitly that the film was edited to their sound. Yet the track appears nowhere on the official soundtrack album because the rights couldn’t be secured for commercial release. It’s a strange orphaning: the song is inseparable from the film’s emotional power, but it exists in the movie as an unlicensed ghost. People who see the film remember that empty-streets opening not as “some atmospheric music” but specifically as Godspeed, even if they don’t know the band’s name.
This confusion—the film is incomplete without the song, but the song is absent from the film’s official documentation—somehow feels appropriate for a composition about invisibility and marginalization.
The Moment Post-Rock Became a Genre
Before “East Hastings,” post-rock existed but wasn’t yet called that. After this album, it had a name, a sound, and a philosophy. The composition demonstrated that long-form instrumental music could be political, could incorporate documentary elements, could refuse resolution or comfort. Bands that came after—Explosions in the Sky, Mono, Tortoise—all drew from this blueprint: slow builds, field recordings, the idea that music could be about place and community rather than personal emotion alone.
Common Questions
Q: Who is the person speaking at the beginning of “East Hastings”? A: The preacher was a real street evangelist known as Imogen who regularly testified on East Hastings Street in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside during the late 1980s and early 1990s. She consented to being recorded by Godspeed guitarists Efrim Menuck and David Bryant, who brought the field recording back to Montreal.
Q: Why did the album change so much between the LP and CD versions? A: The original 1997 LP release contained only two 20-minute compositions. When Kranky Records picked up the album for North American distribution in 1998, Godspeed expanded and reworked the material, splitting it into three distinct pieces and adding new sections, nearly doubling the total runtime from about 40 minutes to 63 minutes.
Q: Was “East Hastings” composed specifically for 28 Days Later? A: No. The track was created in 1997-1998 and released on F♯ A♯ ∞. Director Danny Boyle discovered the album and used an edited version of “The Sad Mafioso” section in the 2002 film because he felt it perfectly captured his vision for the movie.
Q: What does “F♯ A♯ ∞” mean? A: The title refers to the tuning of the guitars used by the band and also to the infinite loop present on the vinyl version. It’s pronounced “F-sharp A-sharp Infinity.”
Q: Why does the band say they’re punk rock, not post-rock? A: Efrim Menuck and other band members have stated they view their work as more aligned with punk rock’s DIY ethos and political engagement than with what “post-rock” suggests. They see the instrumental format and experimental approach as expressions of punk philosophy rather than genre categorization.