Few Postrock Albums and Such (pt.1)
November 20, 2007 at 11:42 am
Are you basically a jazz band? No, I mean we don’t really look at it like that. It’s more feeling with sounds, playing with sounds. We love jazz music and all of us have a background that involves jazz. We just take normal sounds and freak them out. - Tortoise Interview [1]
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Various postrock albums list. I start with canonical albums first.
notes: Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. There is an overlap with avant-garde music. John Cage was a pioneer in experimental music and defined and gave credibility to the form. As with other edge forms that push the limits of a particular form of expression, there is little agreement as to the boundaries of experimental music, even amongst its practitioners. On the one hand, some experimental music is an extension of traditional music, adding unconventional instruments, modifications to instruments, noises, and other novelties to orchestral compositions. At the other extreme, there are performances that most listeners would not characterize as music at all.
The term post-rock was coined by Simon Reynolds in issue 123 of The Wire (May 1994) to describe a sort of music “using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords.”
Originally used to describe the music of such bands as Stereolab, Disco Inferno, Seefeel, Bark Psychosis and Pram, it spread out to be frequently used for all sorts of jazz- and Krautrock-influenced, instrumental, electronica-added music made after 1994. Bands from the early 1990s such as Slint, or earlier, such as Talk Talk were influential on this genre. As with many musical genres, the term is arguably inadequate: it is used for the music of Tortoise as well as that of Mogwai, two bands who have very little in common besides the fact that their music is largely instrumental. [from progarchive]
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Talk Talk - Ascension Day
Laughing Stock (Umgd, 1991)
Although not considered post-rock, jazz/krautrock groups in the early nineties is the progenitor of post-rock sound, originator of many post-rock project in term of structure and texture. Talk Talk maybe one of the more representative. The postrock sound and feel are scattered all over their work. Another favorite example is ‘Future Days‘, an album by Can.
Slint - Washer
Spiderland (Touch & Go Records, 1991)
Probably the most influential postrock album, credited for introducing the form, earning Steve Albini’s rave. “Spiderland is a majestic album, sublime and strange, made more brilliant by its simplicity and quiet grace. Songs evolve and expand from simple statements that are inverted and truncated in a manner that seems spontaneous, but is so pricise and emphatic that it must be intuitive or orchestrated or both.” [2] [wiki]
Labradford - G
Mi Media Naranja (Kranky, 1997)
Is this the minimalist sound that Brian Eno is chasing? Hard to tell, this band from Richmond release several albums in the late 90’s in almost pure texture. An ambitious project for an era filled with hardrock/grunge scene. The significance of this band probably is as a raw material for Matmos, that visionary electro avant-garde duo. [more at brainwashed]
Tortoise - TNT
TNT (Thrill Jockey, 1998)
The album that probably most recognized as postrock sound. With background structure of minimalist avant-garde and jazz, Tortoise created scattered rock riff on top of big guitar texture with complex drum on the background. It is neither jazz, nor prog-rock. Too loud for experimental electro ambient and doesn’t have popular hook for radio. The use of computer is certainly consider sacrilege by many rock purist. And yet this album is the official ambient soundtrack for rock nerd of the world. [more at wiki]
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Dead Flag Blues
f#a# (infinity symbol) (Kranky, 1998)
This band spans the entire golden age of postrock sound. Started in 1994 and announcing indefinite hiatus in 2003, Montreal’s Goodpseed is famous for ambitiously large sound. For eg. their two discs “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven” album are filled with viola, violin, and of course “words” the one that makes them different. They were detained in Oklahoma after a gas station attendant suspect them as radicals. There is a sign of time for you. [wiki]
Explosions In the Sky - Yasmin the Light
Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever (Temporary Residence, 2001)
The Goodspeed Texas counterpart. This album was release in September 2001. Cinematic, clean, punctuated with large wave of electric storm, it is a requiem for postrock hope. That there is larger experiment in sound which can enlighten. It is a morality play in 6 minutes rock piece. Explosion in the sky probably has the most public friendly sound between the cannonical list due to their strick bass, guitar, drum sound. [wiki]
The Mercury Program - Egypt
Data Learn Language (Tiger Style, 2002)
A highly underrated group from Gainesville Florida with unusual instrument: xylophone. I like their balance composition, a cross road between various styles punctuated by a reminder that their work is rock. This track probably sums up my idea of what elegant music is about. Undefined, minimalist, well executed, texture and balance. [wiki]
see also: The Wire
image: Emmr
A nice article from mcgilltribune
http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2002/11/19/AE/Post-Rock.A.Movement.Of.The.90s.Still.Kickin-326959.shtml
Post rock was the dominant form of experimental rock during the 90s, a loose movement that drew from greatly varied influences and nearly always combined standard rock instrumentation with electronics. It fused music such as Kraut-rock, ambient, prog rock, space rock, math rock, tape music, minimalist classical, British IDM and dub with some elements of rock music.
Instead of using traditional song structures and motifs, the music was centred around creating moods and textures through experimental ideas. The music was often droning and instrumental, imitating such previous acts as Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine. Post rock was something of a reaction against rock, particularly the mainstream’s co-opting of alternative rock; much post rock was united by a sense that rock ‘n’ roll had lost its capacity for real rebellion, that it would never break away from tired formulas or empty, macho rock-out with-your-cock-out moments. Thus, post rock rejected (or subverted) any elements it associated with the rock tradition.
The landmark album that started the post rock movement was by Louisville, Kentucky, band Slint. They released Spiderland in 1991. It was full of deliberate, bass-driven grooves, mumbled poetry, oblique structures and extreme volume shifts, all mixed together to create, as über-producer Steve Albini put it, “the best album of all time.”
Somebody posted several of Simon Reynolds article. here is one relevant.
http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2007/08/brian-eno-year-with-swollen-appendices.html
Rigidity of mind is for Eno the least likable thing in the world. The closest thing to bitchiness in an entire year’s secret thoughts occurs after a meeting with The Cranberries, who firmly reject Eno’s oblique strategies and flexible approaches (the reasons any band wants to be produced by him in the first place): “Dolores has a rather startling clarity of intention about how she wants to record,” he notes dryly of the band’s obnoxious lead singer. Fanaticism, in pop or in politics, baffles Eno, and struggle and conflict are curiously absent from both his work and his world-view. He mocks the notion of “the glorious struggle of the artist,” and remarks of painters like Francis Bacon, “I sort of admire… their obvious agony of effort, but it doesn’t move me.” Politically, Eno seems to align himself with a socially progressive, “kinder” capitalism (long-term planning, improved design) insofar as he participates in the Global Business Network, a future-scenarios development group founded by Brand and Peter Schwartz. His only comment on the life ninety percent of humanity are obliged to lead is uncharacteristically thoughtless: “In New York you often look at people working for an honest minimum wage in mind-numbingly awful jobs and think, ‘They are the suckers, the poor suckers.’… Why on earth don’t they turn to crime?”
Rejecting as adolescent the twin passions - romantic desire, underclass resentment -that fuel rock rebellion, Eno favors mind-states at once more mature and more childlike: fascination, reverie, awe, sensuous delectation. His great musical innovation, ambient, is closer in spirit to his other interests - food, wine, decor, perfume, gardening, screen-savers - than to rock’s expressionistic urgency. Clearly representing some kind of model-for-living to Eno are the delighted, open-hearted responses of his daughters, Irial and Darla, to the world. When five-year-old Irial imagines digging through to the other side of the universe and finding a new world there, Eno asks what would be in that world: “God would be there! And bears. Just bears and God.”
SIMON REYNOLDS
Thanks for the brief history lessons before at the beginnig of your post. I particulary enjoyed your informative facts with respect to post-rock.
I am trying to collect nice video interview and such.. but post-rock scene was pre youtube and they are not exactly mtv friendly. So there aren’t many video record.
Here is one by Mono, a japanese postrock group.
This post was very helpful for me last week when I wanted to introduce someone to postrock. Added some Dirty Three and Cuong Vu to mix things up a little, et voila! :D
When’s the second part due?
It’s in total mess. I don’t have time to organize the albums yet. It’s nothing more than scattered links and notes. I still want to collect and read some more material.
on top of that I am obsessing with few electronics albums …heh.
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