Did Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Long-Lost Cassette Finally Leak?

A purported copy of 'All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling' has made its way online

Photo: Casketjack

BY Matt BobkinPublished Feb 4, 2022

As far as unreleased albums go, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling has achieved a mythical status rivalled only by the likes of Weezer's Songs from the Black Hole and Mariah Carey's secret alt-rock record. After years of false alarms and brief snippets of unverified material, fans of the Montreal post-rock titans can feast their ears on an alleged full rip of the 1994 cassette that was cryptically released on the internet today (February 4).

A mega.nz folder containing 68 minutes of music spread over 24 tracks was posted on 4chan earlier today and has since been uploaded to YouTube. The music bears some resemblance to the GY!BE that fans know and love, with winding, melodic electric guitars and ominous found-sound excerpts, but with less atmospheric production, acoustic guitars and more singing. 

Long-rumoured among fans, founding member Efrim Menuck has spoken about the tape's existence on multiple occasions, including in 2009 with Splendid E-Zine and in 2010 with The 405. Purported material from the tape has surfaced several times over the years, most notably in 2013 when a Reddit user named Casketjack uploaded a few photos along with what they claimed to be the tracks "Random Luvly Moncton Blue(s)" and "Dadmomdaddy" from the tape, which they said they had purchased in the early '90s at a record store in Moncton, NB. The new leak features cleaner versions of both tracks, so either both copies are legit or someone's been playing the long con.

While existing stories of All Lights Fucked's origins conflict, it was made by some combination of Menuck and GY!BE co-founders Mauro Pezzente and Mike Moya under the name God Speed You Black Emperor! in the early '90s, ostensibly meant to be Menuck's final musical project made in the wake of a breakup, featuring recordings stitched together on 4-track. Only 33 copies of the cassette were made. The trio later expanded the project to 10 members for the band's first publicly released album, 1997's F♯ A♯ ∞.

Whether this alleged leak is real or not, it's still an interesting collage of avant-garde folk rock, sure to pique the interest of fans of actual GY!BE. Take a listen below and, if you're so inclined, join the folks on the GY!BE subreddit who are hard at work trying to verify its legitimacy.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's latest album is last year's G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! Learn more about the band's history in Exclaim!'s 2015 Timeline feature.

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