what is post-rock - seriously?

I don't think my mom would bat an eye if I put on a Tortoise or For Carnation or Stereolab record while we were fixing Christmas dinner and drinking in the kitchen, but A Trip to Marineville would be something else altogether.

I keep forgetting about BundyKen, since he quit Tortoise. Great fucking guy, great musician. If his music's bloodless, his shirt isn't: he's a paramedic.

Actually, along these lines I pulled out the Dif Juz Extractions album a couple months ago, and I think my motivation was exactly along the lines of trying to tease out any aesthetic connections with the nineties groups (atmospheric, instrumental music). But I really couldn't get into it, it seemed blander than the worst post-rock.

actually the two biggest influences on the brits are probably mbv and ar kane

(Crossposting bitch!)

Also, were the RT bands specifically trying to distance themselves by name from punk w/use of "post punk"? I don't know enough about the specifics of that world to know whether that was the case, or if it was a term bestowed by confused critics. From the stuff I've now read about post-rock, it seems an epithet that bands try to play down or disclaim; was post-punk different as a term? (Not trying to argue about this; I genuinely don't know at all.)

we must all not forget the influence of SAMPLING (i.e. the bomb squad) which perhaps ties back in with sasha's thread, hurrah!

I like this. :-)

Sampling! Jess ist un genius.

But my question is simpler -- is there a lot of sampling visible (ouch, audible, I guess) in this ostensible post-rock community/world/canon?

But really, there is not much in common with jazz is there? (other than that blasted vibraphone, and the instrumental nature)

I'm not deriding the "post-rock" bands - I'm just trying to understand how much substance there is to that label and how much these bands really have in common. I can see why bands would have tried to disown this label: "post-rock" is much worse than "post-punk". "Post-punk" is straightforward enough, meaning bands that came after punk and drew on it. But "rock" is a much bigger target than "punk", and "post-rock" can't escape from its pretentious "rock is dead" implications. It also suggests that these bands are not making rock music, which is a dubious claim. "Rock" is a big umbrella - over the years it has accomodated bands as diverse as Faust, Can, Swell Maps, Captain Beefheart, Kraftwerk, and Supertramp - so to say that these recent bands are really sooo innovative and sooo different as to make them a new animal altogether seems unjustified, at least in many of the cases in which it's been applied.

what comes after a rock show? the DJ!

I'm curious -- Weather Report:yes, others:no due to personal taste, or philosophical/aesthetic kinship?

Yeah, htstencil, there's a similar broadening of music and influences in these two groups of music, but the Rough Trade-rs were still operating from the emotional and political perspective of punk, just giving it more sophisticated and diverse musical setting. The post-rockers seem to aspire to professional artists/muso status by comparison, the emotion and politics (if at all) are consiously very muted...

(70's Miles Davis doesn't seem to, but I always think of this as somehow unclassifiable, or beyond labelling. I guess some of this is subjective, surely.)

..."post-rock" can't escape from its pretentious "rock is dead" implications.

You might wanna blame the coiner of the phrase then (aka Mr. Simon Reynolds) and not the bands saddled with it.

The post-rockers seem to aspire to professional artists/muso status by comparison, the emotion and politics (if at all) are consiously very muted...

Uh, do you mean muted like a shredded American flag on the cover of Standards?

I do! As I wrote before, I don't blame the bands for trying to disown the tag. I think you're right about this turning out to be as hard to pin down as "post-modernism". In fact, both terms suffer from the same weakness - an inherent lack of substance. Both terms are defined in terms of what they are NOT. But lots of things are NOT modernism, just as lots of things are NOT rock. Therefore, before too long you find the term can be applied to just about anything.

oy, I meant "lame" in the literal sense of "ineffectual" or "weak", cause an (artfuly?) shredded american flag (particulary on an album cover) (of instrumental music) is an ambiguous symbol at best. I think it has as much political impact as the use of the american flag on the Black Crowe's "Amorica" album ;-)

And "valid" was not my word...

This is Post Rock
Living In A Post Rock Nation
Po 'StroXXX: Volumes
It's Only Post Rock To Me

In the words of James Murphy I was there, so curious what I might get out of a book like this. At the time, I just thought a lot of the groups were kind of proggy and really into Morricone, which was fine with me. I really wished Tortoise, full of jazzbos with good chops, improvised more. But Gastr, I thought what they were up to was totally different. Same, obviously, with bands like Sea and Cake. It's kind of like the CBGB scene, when every band was branded Punk but no two bands sounded remotely similar.

That Jack Schuter book Storm Static Sleep is an earlier book on the history of post-rock that I've had turn up on Amazon recommend searches several times.
I think it's been out for a few years so I thought at least somebody on a post-rock thread might have come across it.
I don't think there are an abundance of books on the subject.
So has anybody here actually read it?

Yes, I read it and I wasn't terribly keen, it felt a little slight although that could just be the spread of bands he chose to write about.

I read it but can't remember anything about it. On that basis I'd hazard a guess it's not essential.

I can't see Savage Republic mentioned in the Fearless index. I thought they were an influence mentioned by several of the bands crucial to post-rock.

Does Leech mention any connection between Rhys Chatham and Nina canal at all. I remember hearing they were married at one point, but can't find confirmation. been wondering if taht was a relationship or marriage of convenience since she was a Brit living in NYC.
She was also in the band the Gynecologists with him and tehre seems to be quite a lot of space given to Ut.

BTW thinking of Ut I really like Sally Young's later band Quint who do a proggy folky thing on their 1 lp Time Wounds All Heals.

fearless is a really great book. though I still think there is a complete division between the US stuff and the UK originated stuff to the point where I don't really think they are they same gentre; but I'm happy to read about all of these bands together I guess.

I still think there is a complete division between the US stuff and the UK originated stuff to the point where I don't really think they are they same gentre

yes to this, but without slint + gybe it would be hard to connect first wave uk stuff to the quiet/loud boreathons of latter day uk + global post rock

fearless is a really great book. though I still think there is a complete division between the US stuff and the UK originated stuff to the point where I don't really think they are they same gentre; but I'm happy to read about all of these bands together I guess.

― akm, Friday, August 25, 2017 9:41 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i sort of agree with this, other than the fact that mogwai - the biggest uk post-rock group? - are hugely influenced by slint (later stuff not so much)

actually i was thinking that this would make a pretty good audio companion to the book and i guess the mix of uk and us wasn't especially jarring to me at the time:

https://image.ibb.co/iTVRrk/moon_men.jpg

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Monsters-Robots-Bug-Men-A-Users-Guide-To-The-Rock-Hinterland/release/178563

I thought there wasa lot of interplay between bands across the Atlantic anyway. Not sure if results would be immediately recognisable but know taht a band like Bark Psychosis was heavily indebted to the Swans dynamics and both Graham Sutton and John ling hitched following Dinosaur Jr around in '89.

I know taht NYC nouise thing as well as bands like the Butthole Surfers were very popular among bands that went onto be significant in Post-Rock. Also Slint of course.
Trying to think what fed back across the opposite direction.

Not got very far into the book, just reading about MBV being a jangle pop band which wasn't the way I remembered seeing them when i did before they became ghuge. I was thinking more noisey garagey stuff verging on psychobilly back in 1986. So was janglepop a transitive stage or was it a longer term thing somehwere between there and '88. Just trying to think when I followed teh first Silverfish tour which was as support for them and by which time i was thinking much more Sonic Youth.
I keep coming across things in the book that I disagree with and clunky sentences. So I think she's not going to be one of my prefered writers. I found Seasons They Change far too listy too.

Has Leech effectively excised all the bands who had ties in with the garage/psychobilly scene's pasts? I haven't seen any reference to the Wolfhounds or the early pre Debbie Googe days of MBV. Would have tghought it might be something taht she might at least refer to possibly as the primitive rock they were supposed to be post i.e. as a major contrast.

Did I hear that MBV actually first formed as ex-pat Irish in Berlin and already had some influence from Einsturzende Neubauten etc from formation or was that a revisionist history at the time.

Here to muddy the water further re: "what is post-rock?" how about post-rock 1979-1989:

'Post-Rock 1979-1989': https://t.co/XCJUpvI8J9

Post-rock as a continuum of exploration...

w/ Gigi Masin, Laughing Hands, Massacre, Michael Brook, @_thisheat_ Hraold Budd, Material, Spacemen 3, Dif Juz, Dome, The Cure, MBV, Glenn Branca, @DuruttiColumn Colin Newman, Talk Talk pic.twitter.com/zT2nMSNzHE

— Musicophilia (@musicophiliamix) January 19, 2021

it's when you play the guitar and post to ILX at the same time

Soundslike, this mix is wonderful! Thank you.

Thank you, glad you're enjoying it!

I'd missed this until now: Bundy K Brown's band Directions (In Music, sometimes) released a single in 1997 that seems to have vanished out of sight. It was re-released last year and a couple of the remixes are wonderful. This could be on Underworld's Drift series or the Alabaster DePlume record we all lost our minds over during the first lockdown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUCO5J5E0QA