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Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: nuisance on 24 Aug 2006, 17:48
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Harping on about genre names is pretty annoying, I know... but ... When I was at uni I got into early Tortoise, Directions, Rome, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Ui. Others called this post-rock and I thought it was good stuff. It was generally quite lively and/or psychedelic music that reached well beyond a rock pallette towards jazz, dub, house ... it felt very open to me, like any of these acts could reach out in numerous directions.
Somewhere around 97 (?) things like Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor came along and people were saying this was post-rock too. I bought 'Young Team' and listened to a friend's copy of that first GYBE one too, but was pretty bored by it all. It seemed very "dramatic" - somber, rock building to huge, crashing climaxes and then settling down again. Repeatedly. It fitted in with stuff on labels like Kranky, and people were calling this post-rock too.
So now it seems like if I talk to anyone about "post-rock" they're thinking of the latter, moody business. Which is stink for me cos I have no terms for the kind of music that I do like that can help me find new things in a similar vein. Some people called things like To Rococo Rot and Kreidler "neu Kraut", but that seems to only refer to a very small group of artists.
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Post-Rock is a pretty terrible genre descriptor. Because my first exposure was to later post-rock (Sigur Ros, Mogwai, GY!BE, Explosions in the Sky, The Album Leaf), I tend to associate the word with the later post-rock sound. I do love Tortoise though, and can understand how the difference in sounds under the same label is kind of wierd.
I disagree that the later post-rock sound is boring though. Many of my favorite bands have this style of sound, and when it is done well I think it's great.
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There's certainly a difference between the intriguing and unique but still earthly and understandable sound of, say, Slint and the cosmic orchestral-ness of bands like GY!BE. I think the post-rock label applies better to the latter group.
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Well if The Clash, Fugazi, Misfits, Minutemen, Ramones, Wire & The Stooges can all be called punk, why not have post-rock be a broad (if wanky) term- genres are only meant to be loose indicators of a band's sound anywya.
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I think what he's saying though is that the genre is sooo wide that it doesn't even describe a band's sound unless you put that band in the context of it's time period and similar bands.
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I will dispute applying the label Post-Rock to Slint up until I reach the grave. They always seemed much more grounded in Hardcore to me...a lot more post-punk than post-rock.
which, since they're considered godfathers of post-rock, would make GY!BE and Mogwai post-post-rock or post-punk-rock-post-rock, and The Album Leaf more of a post-post-indie-electronic-folk-rock.
In fact, by even posting about post-post rock in a post-rock thread, I'm posting a post-post post about post-rock that's really post-post rock.
post.
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...Damn
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I will dispute applying the label Post-Rock to Slint up until I reach the grave. They always seemed much more grounded in Hardcore to me...a lot more post-punk than post-rock.
which, since they're considered godfathers of post-rock, would make GY!BE and Mogwai post-post-rock or post-punk-rock-post-rock, and The Album Leaf more of a post-post-indie-electronic-folk-rock.
In fact, by even posting about post-post rock in a post-rock thread, I'm posting a post-post post about post-rock that's really post-post rock.
post.
Well orchestrated. Bravo.
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Most of the bands (i heard at least) labeled post-rock are pretty dramatic (GY!BE even more so). Jazzier things like Do Make Say Think are often labeled post-rock because there really isn't term that describes their sound perfectly.
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I don't know, I kind of equate this sort of thing with the same sort of reverence people had for the term "post-modernism". So, given that, what do you have after "post...whatever"? And how can you be post-anything anyway? You're not after it, it's still going on. Maybe that's just me.
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I am in agreeance with Mr. Carter. I find the entire concept of Post-blah confusing. But I suppose its one of those word that people overuse - just like "blah-core" and "blah-wave". At least this time it is in front. =/
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The whole thing about post-rock is that it's basically music that uses rock instrumentation for non-rock music. That's why so many different sounds technically fall under post-rock.
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If that's the case, anything outside of what can be considered 'normal' rock music could be post rock. Industrial with guitars, pop-rock, college rock..anything. Oi. This was all much simpler when there was just a sound and a signifier, like 'pop-punk' or 'folkmetal'. Abstract terms just monkey up the works.
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Yeah, of course it's an awful sounding term, but it did have its uses and I think those artists I mentioned do make music that suggests something beyond rock stylings that could not have been made before.
I guess my beef is simply that I was getting into this music when the genre meant one thing, and at that time it was a useful enough term for music I really liked. Now most people relate it to a whole lot of other shit that I don't like in the slightest.
I also find it confusing that a lot of music that I consider rock (eg. Mogwai, most definitely Sigur Ros) is suddenly post-itself. Bands I grew up on like Loop, Ride, Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine were all just as textural and whatever else, but they were considered rock and, IMO, rightly so.
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I don't see what's so confusing about it. To me post-rock is just a logical extension of modern rock...I think the same for any genre still applies to post-rock though, in that if you listen to enough of it you'll be able to tell what's post-rock simply by listening to it and not really having to use some kind of guidelines or definition.
Read the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_rock) for a better definition than mine. If you read it it explains why Mogwai is post-rock but My Bloody Valentine or other shoegazer bands aren't.
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Yeah, I've read that wiki before, it clarifies nothing for me beyond my feeling that the term has changed incredibly. I could find nothing in there that distinguishes MBV from Mogwai. FWIW, I think I've listened to about 80% of the artists mentioned on that page, so I disagree that you can just "feel" the term.
Have you heard any of the groups mentioned in Reynolds' article (http://web.archive.org/web/20011202075606/http%3a//www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm)? This is where the term post-rock was coined, and it's all about how groups interface with technology, reject the live band approach, etc. Electronics. Check out something like Disco Inferno, who sing songs over a jammed mess of musical and concrete samples, and tell me how that relates to Iceland's answer to U2.
Sorry, I know this is pointless, I'll stop.
(Man, Seefeel were awesome...)
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Yeah. Arguing over genres is pointless. Call music whatever you want to call it.
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I think every genre expands so much at some point that it can't even really be considered the same as what it was years ago. That's why I use genre terms loosely when describing bands.
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I will dispute applying the label Post-Rock to Slint up until I reach the grave. They always seemed much more grounded in Hardcore to me...a lot more post-punk than post-rock.
which, since they're considered godfathers of post-rock, would make GY!BE and Mogwai post-post-rock or post-punk-rock-post-rock, and The Album Leaf more of a post-post-indie-electronic-folk-rock.
In fact, by even posting about post-post rock in a post-rock thread, I'm posting a post-post post about post-rock that's really post-post rock.
post.
Ho. That is impressive.
Any opinions on the best "post-rock" groups?
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Which era, 'classic post-rock' (E.g. Slint, Tortoise) or 'new post-rock' (E.g. Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky)?
Actually the ones I listed there are pretty good I think.
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Have you heard any of the groups mentioned in Reynolds' article (http://web.archive.org/web/20011202075606/http%3a//www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm)? This is where the term post-rock was coined, and it's all about how groups interface with technology, reject the live band approach, etc. Electronics. Check out something like Disco Inferno, who sing songs over a jammed mess of musical and concrete samples, and tell me how that relates to Iceland's answer to U2.
Sorry, I know this is pointless, I'll stop.
(Man, Seefeel were awesome...)
Hmm never thought of Seefeel as post-rock. Bark Psychosis definitely were though.
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IMO Post-rock is the conveyence of emotion without words (or decipherable words in Sigur Ros' case). I am a lover of post-rock. It doesnt deserve to be split. Tortoise and GYBE have eual claim to the title. Just like the Mogwai's and Do Make Say thinks that came with them, or the Explosions in the Sky's and Japandi's. They all have equal right. Genres are used to describe a type of music into a catagory so you dont have to spend mind numbing hours trying to find more of the drug for your fix.
For me my conclusions of post rock came from the fact I would often enter a dream-like epiphinated state. Where when the song or album was done I could reflect on things with much more of an ease. GYBE, as 'moody' as it may be, brings images of peace. Most of todays post-rock albums bring you in a leave you with a feeling of peace. A strange Neutrality.
(Oh also on groups IMO they would look a bit like this:
-More Jazzy-
Tortoise
Do Make Say Think
Japandi
More Rock-
Godspeed
Mogwai
Explosions in the Sky
More Jazzy or More rock I love them both the same.)
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Wasn't Stereolab considered "post-rock"?
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and Fugazi's albums, to an extent.
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IMO Post-rock is the conveyence of emotion without words
Not a great definition. Almost all music manages to convey an emotion, whether by vocals or by instrumentals. We can't just start calling a piece of music (for example, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade) post-rock just because it has no vocals and conveys lots of emotion (which Scheherazade does). Genres have stylistic traits and origins; that's what makes them genres.
That said, I agree with you that the genre is big enough for both traditional and new post-rock.
Wasn't Stereolab considered "post-rock"?
Yeah :)
I love Stereolab, although I like to consider it electronica.
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Electronica!? Really? I guess since I've only listened to Switched On, I have no real say. :P
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Electronica!? Really? I guess since I've only listened to Switched On, I have no real say. :P
Their early music is krautrock-like, then they started adding more electronic sounds. There was a period where they sounded like lounge music but that's pretty much over with.
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I've recently been listening to a lot of 'classic' (or 'classic influenced') post-rock (Slint, Tortoise, The Mercury Program, Don Caballero), and while I also enjoy ethereal beauty and atmohspheric qualities of latter post-rock, the classic stuff really is amazing. It retains more normal rock conventions, but also channels so much emotion.
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i've always called the jazzier stuff of " post-rock" math-rock, like don caballero or slint for example.
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Well yeah, Don Cab is most definitely math rock, and Slint has some major math influences also. But Tortoise (who I consider to be the jazziest of the early post-rock bands), I don't see as math-rock.
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To pointlessly come back to this, the only reason Tortoise qualified as post-rock in my mind is because they're not just a rock band. They show influences of dance music (one of the members is/was a drum'n'bass DJ), of contemporary composers (like their bald Steve Reich rips) and they use programming and prominent synths and stuff in a non-rock, non-prog way. Ever heard the mighty Goriri off a compilation called 'Macro Dub Infection'? It's this wobbly ghost of a track that could never be played live.
To me, this is post-rock. It's not a largely instrumental rock band playing a new kind of rock music with slightly different gestures. It's a mix of rock and non-rock ideas creating some weird fusion.
I think Slint, to take an example I have heard, are nothing to do with post-rock as I imagine it. This is in no way a criticism of their originality or anything, just thinking in terms of grouping sounds to talk about them... But obviously it's a losing battle, cos the definition has moved on without me.
No offense, but Stereolab being electronica made me spit my breakfast milk out my nose. They're a live band. Ignoring 'Dots and Loops', where the guys from Tortoise and Mouse On Mars did some funny things, they've never touched contemporary electronics at all.
Oh, I guess the Turned On project could be considered electronica, but that's not Stereolab.
Haha, I resisted replying to this for so long.
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What say we call it "de-pop" guys.