Rockpedia

In short

A rehearsal building in the Mile End, a label that refused to promote anything, and two bands who took it in opposite directions.

The scene

Constellation Records made a set of decisions that were meant to limit it and turned out to define it: record live to tape, package by hand, print no photographs of the band, and let a piece run twenty minutes if it needs to. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's records are field recordings and orchestral crescendos with no singer and no explanation, and they made post-rock a thing people argued about. Arcade Fire came out of the same few streets and did the reverse — the same scale, aimed directly at an audience — which is why the city produced both the least and the most commercial records of its decade.