what is post-rock - seriously?

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

(the term shoegazing alone annoys me)

well the comparison to post-modernism is completely valid, but I don't think that makes it useless. AT best, you could say that post-rock is a way to define a method or a mindframe rather than an actual recognizable signature sound. Maybe in that case the term cannot qualify as a "genre" but I'm happy with that.
As with post-modernism, some guys reached the conclusion that there was really nowhere/nothing to look ahead and therefore started to look sideways (or in many cases looking behind). In other words, as with most other art forms, a general consensus emerged at some point in the 90s around the idea that linear musical "progress" was futile and that, to grow, rock had to incorporate approaches from other genres (and here i'm not talking about merely borrowing sounds or production tricks from other styles of popular western music, ie. "adding a dance element to your music")
I guess the idea is not that new and that's why some of the post-rock stuff doesn't sound all that fresh (hello Can, jazz-rock, ...) but, hey, I still see a point in having a term for it.
oder?

If "post-rock" exists at all, it exists as a common tendency that is visible in a number of otherwise dissimilar bands of the mid to late 90s: the tendency to downplay certain traditional elements of the rock sound (loud guitars, riffs, blues influence, short songs, emotionally direct lyrics) and to deliberately adopt elements of other genres (tropicalia, jazz, classical, exotica). The bands that went the furthest in this direction are the ones to whom the term applies best (e.g., Tortoise), but for most bands that get tarred with the "post-rock" brush, these tendencies were only one part of a sound that still remained solidly within the confines of a recognizably "rock" style.

You're thinking of Mark Perry on ALternative TV's first album. He has a lot of albums spread out on the floor and they're all fucking great, I think he has Beefheart, van Dyke Parks, Gil Scott Heron, lots of stuff.

There is no substance to this label (but then again that applies to a lot of labels).

There isn't much substance to the music either.