From: (Josh Kortbein)
Subject: Re: "Serious popular" music (Was: Re: Beethoven of the 20th century)
Date: 5 Jan 2000 18:45:01 GMT

Matt Friedman ("mwf" wrote:
: piper wrote:

: > Is "post-rock" a type of music or just a description of music written
: > past a certain time??? You explain what you're talking about, and we
: > can try to discuss it.

: I'm not sure, but I think he's referring to the instrumental prog-rock
: stuff done by guitar virtuosi like Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Yngvie
: Malmsteen.

"Post-rock" is a not-very-descriptive catch-all label - coined by
dance critic Simon Reynolds, maybe? - to describe a bunch of bands
whose music mixed outside influences with more traditional rock
structures, or who wrote music with rock instrumentation, but
with an eye toward different forms, etc. The 70s "krautrock" bands
are a major influence on lots of the post-rock bands: Faust, Can,
Neu!, Kraftwerk. Post-rock tends not to rock, really, and depending
on the sources of inspiration can sound very different. 

Some popular post-rock bands include Tortoise, Stereolab, and Mogwai.
Tortoise have a rock ensemble, but with two bassists, vibes, and
electronics, and their music draws a lot from dub, Ennio Morricone
film music -style fusion, and a certain kind of experimental (not
very though) electronic music. Stereolab's music is primarily made
up of drones and lounge music, though there's a heavy Brazilian
jazz influence. Their vocals [which reminds me, Tortoise have none]
are female, usually from two vocalists in some beautiful harmonies,
and are usually laconic, sometimes in French rather than English,
and often about Marxist political views. Stereolab, at various times,
have employed live instrumentation including drums, guitars, bass,
and lots of analog synthesizers and keyboards, as well as electronic
drums and maybe digital keyboards. Mogwai are a Scottish group
interested in creating "serious guitar music," whose songs are
often slowly paced, somber pieces until they explode in thunderous
noise. Though Mogwai play a bit with field recordings, answering
machine messages, and the like, they mostly play "live," or at
least as live as other rock -type albums are when recorded. They
have standard rock instrumentation, but with more guitars.

"Post-rock" definitely does not refer to anything by Satriani, Johnson,
or Malmsteen. Though it has the aforementioned antecedents in 70s
Krautrock, and some bands near the end of the 80s / beginning of
the 90s (Mogwai, for example, are often cited as Slint ripoffs,
which they are not, Slint being a postrockish band from around 1991),
post-rock is mostly a 90s phenomenon. It's a musical label rather
than period label, though, as there's plenty of other music deserving
of other labels.

Because of the popularity of the label, and its original vagueness,
"post-rock" gets over- and wrongly applied, often. Most serious (hah)
music listeners will groan when someone says "post-rock."

There's a lot better information out there than this - probably
even Simon Reynolds' original writings about post-rock.

NP: A Tribe Called Quest, _The Low End Theory_

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