Grounds Made Of Ash Beyond Sonic Extinction

image Credit: Daniel Gianfranceschi

By Daniel Gianfranceschi

Climatological catastrophes, cold and warm-wars threatening existence at large, species-wide extinction, global inflation and a myriad of other tangentially disastrous predicaments seem to call for the nearing apocalypse on a daily fashion; so much so that, in fact, even catastrophe itself has become mundaneized by how the human interacts with it. “I am not directly afflicted by it so it cannot be that bad”, or the likes. Certainly, a prevailing anthropocentrism is at play here, in so far as even the most doomed human being will image their way out of catastrophe, at times even only by sheer force of will or manifestation, as if to constantly point out that, in fact, it will be the human to die last. Cities will have become nothing but distant remants of forests and, much like television-shows such as “Last Of Us” confirm, the human still thinks itself not only inside the corpse of what we might’ve earlier called a biotope but supremely equipped with navigating its reality, as if to experience the world dying is not the same as actually having witness it, with both options yielding different results. But what if the apocalypse has just become camouflaged as a distant arrival when, in reality, it has been here all along? What if, at a certain point, quality of life becomes quantity of life (or death)? Who will sing the reaper’s song, when all is said and done?

An apt sonic accompaniment to our demise would certainly be that of Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, known for their ascending compositions whose only limitation is the endurance of the players itself. Moreover, it would be wrong to say they “sing” the reaper’s song, for the only trace of the human (voice) in their work is found in snippets of recitations that feel more like fossils of a generation long gone than a testament confirming their presence. Even then, the only trackable debris of the human is one of uncertainty, if not outright absurdity. “The car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel”, a voice narrates in “The Dead Flag Blues”, pointing out one of two possible events: either that there is not culprit for the crime – as the buffoonery of the American presidential circuit would seem to confirm – or that doom is impending with or without humans, they only standing in the way of the unavoidable. Yet, it would be wrong to stipulate GYBE as being solely a nihilistic, post-depressive band for the end of the world; in fact, we would only be correct in assuming a Nietzschean nihilism in the face of the band’s material; of nihilism as something that overcomes the established modes of living, as something that cures by poisoning us. In this way, it would perhaps be more right to say that the band actually stops at a nanosecond before unrecoverable apocalypse, like time-travelers defeating empiricism and having witnessed the end only to bravely report back their findings as warnings: the world, indifferent to the human. Their tragic discovery serves not as a point of no return, assured and finite, but as a call to action: if the end of the world is assured, as it will be in billions of years, we’d better to anything in our powers in order to not live out some proto-technical fantasy of the end dragged on into an entire lifetime. If the end is near, there must be a state-of-the-world both before apocalypse and after the slow but assured demise of the world we once knew we are experiencing in the modern age, or, as Ray Brassier writes:

“when pushed to its ultimate extremity, the destruction of difference unleashed by the will to nothingness turns against itself and yields a hitherto inconceivable variety of difference.“

That being said, it must also be acknowledged that the band clearly has moments at which their message reminds us that in every pre-apocalyptic situation, there is someone or something holding the overdrive button. The band’s latest album (as of 2026), entitled “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” makes its intentions clear from the get-go: not only is the auditor’s statistical imagination called into action in so far as to imagine where that number stands in the present of the continued decomposition of Gaza, it also reminds us that, although insulated, extinction is all but speculative. The title is not a proposition but an actuality, with morbidity treated not like a seductive elements but merely as factual, with the only different to real, global apocalypse the fact that all those not afflicted by the aftermath of famine, genocide and cultural eradication privileged enough to be able to watch the events from afar. And yet, even in the face of unspeakable horrors, the band never falls into a self-aggrandizing pessimism; instead, the band continues to adhere to their Nietzscheian roots, calling not for despair but to not give up instead. A statement on the band’s Bandcamp, concerning the album in question, reads:

…the sun setting above beds of ash

while we sat together, arguing.

the old world order barely pretended to care.

this new century will be crueler still.

war is coming.

don’t give up.

pick a side.

hang on.

love.

Instead of being those that stock up on food, Godspeed would be, in a truly apocalyptic scenario, those that help to build the house. Those that take, as Nietzsche calls it, “action at a distance”, “Resembling the ship with its white sails which like some tremendous butterfly passes over the dark sea!”, right at the front-lines against the impending dusk that might await us, reminding us that life, in its current form, could never be possible anywhere else if not right here, right now. Sure, there is more than just a little tragedy in that statement, especially given the state of our modern civilizations, but, as long as there is life (quantity), there must be some merit (quality) to living, right? Godspeed never falls into the trap of over-generalizing the apocalypse; they do not care about WASP-76b, an exoplanet located 640 light-years aways where it rains molten iron, because they, much like the average listener, have no frame of reference of the canonical end, instead focusing on the way towards it; if, in a earlier age, the car was burning with no driver at the wheel, now the car is rebuild with civilization at the wheel, going nowhere in particular.

As long as the “sun sets above beds of ash”, thought is still possible. Brassier, again, in his exploration of the death of the sun, writes the following:

“Thought is perfectly capable of transcending the limits it has posited for itself. But the extinction of the sun is not a limit of or for thought. In this regard, it annuls the relationship to death from which philosophical thought drew sustenance.”

Brassier, again, quoting Lyotard:

“With the disappearance of earth, thought will have stopped – leaving that disappearance absolutely unthought of.”

So, since the human’s horizon of thought is predicated on its possibility to think itself there  with the edge of said horizon, Godspeed repeatedly makes the following point: the apocalypse is nothing if we are not in it, its horizon abolished as well, if we are able to find a way that circumvents it, even if the result is only a sliver of what we may have previously called “humanity”. As long as there is thought, there is the possibility for thought to change, even on grounds made of ash. Even in hope deferred in perpetuity, the band’s attitude is one of not giving up without a fight, without a final endurance-test for human thought, to truly drive it to its extreme, to the point when it consummates itself into only a reverberance of what it means to be human. In fact, many of the band’s live-performances end with each member slowly leaving the stage, leaving each instrument to feedback ad infinitum; sonic afterlife in human extinction. And yet, the band still trusts that, at the end of solar oblivion, there will be someone there to turn down the amp’s volume.

This essay is part of a larger work under the title Sonic Nihilism, forthcoming on Adventurous Music Press.

Daniel Gianfranceschi is a multidisciplinary artist and writer working within the realms of painting, text and sound. Gianfranceschi previously studied fashion management under Prof. Sabine Resch & Prof. Markus Mattes and is now continuing his studies in painting and sound at the Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Florian Pumhösl & Prof. Florian Hecker. His work has been shown at Museum Brandhorst, Kunstbau (am Lenbachhaus), AkademieGalerie München, Kunstpavillon München, Goethe-Institut Athens, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Kunstverein Rosenheim, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, among others. Writing contributions have been featured in Erratum Press, Cutt Press, Hyperspekulation, Blue Labyrinth, Magazin53a, Les Nouveaux Riches, Sleeve Magazine, Positionen Magazin, Frameless Magazin and more. His musical output has been performed at various institutions and featured in compilations by the likes of Industrial Coast, Les Horribles Travailleurs and more. His debut poetry-collection, “Soft Leather Contradiction”, is out now on Creative Writing Department. He has been assisting Prof. Florian Hecker since 2026.