Post-rock

Post-rock is a subgenre of experimental rock characterized by the exploration of textures and timbres as well as non-rock styles, often with minimal or no vocals, placing less emphasis on conventional song structures or riffs than on atmosphere for musically evocative purposes. Post-rock artists can often combine rock instrumentation and rock stylings with electronics and digital production as a means of enabling the exploration of textures, timbres and different styles. The genre emerged within the indie and underground music scenes of the 1980s and 1990s, but as it abandoned rock conventions, it began to show less musical resemblance to conventional indie rock at the time. The first wave of post-rock derives inspiration from diverse sources including ambient, electronica, jazz, krautrock, psychedelia, dub, and minimalist classical, with these influences also being pivotal for the substyle of ambient pop.

Groups such as Talk Talk and Slint were credited with producing foundational works in the style in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The term "post-rock" was notably employed by journalist Simon Reynolds in a review of Bark Psychosis' 1994 album Hex, published in the March 1994 issue of Mojo magazine. With the release of Tortoise's 1996 album Millions Now Living Will Never Die, post-rock became an accepted term for the associated scene of artists. The term has since developed to refer to bands oriented around dramatic and suspense-driven instrumental rock, making the term controversial among listeners and artists alike.

Etymology

The concept of "post-rock" was initially developed by Reynolds in the May 1994 issue of The Wire to describe music "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords". He further expounded on the term that

[p]erhaps the really provocative area for future development lies [...] in cyborg rock; not the wholehearted embrace of Techno's methodology, but some kind of interface between real time, hands-on playing and the use of digital effects and enhancement.

Reynolds, in a July 2005 entry in his blog, said that he had used the concept of "post-rock" before using it in Mojo, previously referring to it in a feature on Insides for music newspaper Melody Maker. He also said he later found the term not to be of his own coinage, writing in his blog "I discovered many years later it had been floating around for over a decade." In 2021, Reynolds reflected on the evolution of the style, saying that the term had developed in meaning during the 21st century, no longer referring to "left-field UK guitar groups engaged in a gradual process of abandoning songs [and exploring] texture, effects processing, and space," but instead coming to signify "epic and dramatic instrumental rock, not nearly as post- as it likes to think it is."

Earlier uses of the term include its employment in a 1975 article by American journalist James Wolcott about musician Todd Rundgren, although with a different meaning. It was also used in the Rolling Stone Album Guide to name a style roughly corresponding to "avant-rock" or "out-rock". The earliest use of the term cited by Reynolds dates back as far as September 1967. In a Time cover story feature on the Beatles, writer Christopher Porterfield hails the band and producer George Martin's creative use of the recording studio, declaring that this is "leading an evolution in which the best of current post-rock sounds are becoming something that pop music has never been before an art form." Another pre-1994 example of the term in use can be found in an April 1992 review of 1990s noise-pop band The Earthmen by Steven Walker in Melbourne music publication Juke, where he describes a "post-rock noisefest".

Characteristics

Post-rock incorporates stylings and traits from a variety of musical genres and scenes, including krautrock, ambient, psychedelia, prog rock, space rock, math rock, tape music and other experimental recording techniques, minimalist classical, British IDM, jazz (both avant-garde and cool), and dub, as well as post-punk, free jazz, contemporary classical, and avant-garde electronica. It can also bear similarities to drone music, and usage of drones in psychedelic rock. Early post-rock groups often exhibited strong influence from the krautrock of the 1970s, particularly borrowing elements of the "motorik", the characteristic krautrock rhythm.

Post-rock compositions can often make use of repetition of musical motifs and subtle changes with an extremely wide range of dynamics. In some respects, this is similar to the music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Brian Eno, pioneers of minimalism who were acknowledged influences on bands in the first wave of post-rock. Post-rock pieces can be lengthy and instrumental, containing repetitive build-ups of timbres, dynamics and textures. Vocals are often omitted from post-rock; however, this does not necessarily mean they are absent entirely. When vocals are included, the use is typically non-traditional: some post-rock bands employ vocals as purely instrumental efforts and incidental to the sound, rather than a more traditional use where "clean", easily interpretable vocals are important for poetic and lyrical meaning. When present, post-rock vocals are often soft or droning and are typically infrequent or present in irregular intervals, and have abstract or impersonal lyrics. Sigur Rós, a band known for their distinctive vocals, fabricated a language they called "Hopelandic" ("Vonlenska" in Icelandic), which they described as "a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument."

Often, in lieu of typical rock structures like the verse-chorus form, post-rock groups make greater use of soundscapes. Simon Reynolds states in his essay "Post-Rock" from Audio Culture that "A band's journey through rock to post-rock usually involves a trajectory from narrative lyrics to stream-of-consciousness to voice-as-texture to purely instrumental music". Reynolds' conclusion defines the sporadic progression from rock, with its field of sound and lyrics to post-rock, where samples are manipulated, stretched and looped.

History

Forerunners

The Velvet Underground and their "dronology" were referred to by Reynolds as having significantly influenced much "of today's post rock activity" in the first wave, especially with regards to the 1990s space rock revival. In addition, the 1970s krautrock bands Can, Neu!, Faust and Cluster equally majorly influenced post-rock acts, including Stereolab and Mogwai.

This Heat, which formed in 1976, are regarded as having predated the genre with their significantly unconventional musical stylings and repetitive structures, while also being credited as an influence on bands in the first wave of post-rock.

Stylus Magazine observed that David Bowie's 1977 album Low, produced by Brian Eno, would have been considered post-rock if released twenty years later. Louder also described the English post-punk band Wire as "the genre's godfathers," highlighting their 1979 studio album 154 as an early precursor that signposted the beginning of post-rock.

British post-punk band Public Image Ltd have been seen as pivotal for post-rock, with the NME describing them as "arguably the first post-rock group". Their 1979 album Metal Box almost completely abandoned traditional rock structures in favor of dense, repetitive dub and krautrock inspired soundscapes and John Lydon's cryptic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. The year before Metal Box was released, PiL bassist Jah Wobble declared that "rock is obsolete".

1990s: first wave

The term post-rock was first used to describe the texturally oriented, eclectic and electronica-tinged rock-adjacent indie music of English bands such as Stereolab, Moonshake, Laika, Disco Inferno, Seefeel, Bark Psychosis, Pram and Insides, many of which began in post-punk and shoegaze roots; these were largely deemed post-rock as such in Reynolds' music journalism. Bands from the early 1990s such as Slint (with Spiderland) or, earlier, Talk Talk (with Laughing Stock), were recognized as influential on post-rock by later music critics. Despite marked differences between the two bands, with Talk Talk emerging from art rock and new wave and Slint emerging from post-hardcore, they both have had a driving influence on the way post-rock progressed throughout the 1990s into the 2000s.

Groups in Chicago such as Tortoise, The Sea and Cake and Cul de Sac, as well as more ambient-oriented bands from the Kranky label like Labradford, Bowery Electric, and Stars of the Lid, are often cited as foundational to the American first wave of post-rock, especially in the Chicago school. The second Tortoise album Millions Now Living Will Never Die made the band a post-rock icon according to music critics, with bands such as Do Make Say Think beginning to record music inspired by the Chicago school. John McEntire of Tortoise and Jim O'Rourke of Gastr Del Sol were prominent in the movement, with them both also producing multiple albums by Stereolab in the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2000, Radiohead released the studio album Kid A, marking a significant turning point in their musical style. Reynolds described it and the 2001 follow-up album Amnesiac as major examples of post-rock in the style that had been established by the first wave, incorporating influences from krautrock, space rock, jazz and electronica into the band's indie rock music; he noted that the success of the albums showed that the style had made a mainstream breakthrough.

Another eminent post-rock locale was Montreal, where Godspeed You! Black Emperor and related groups, including Silver Mt. Zion and Fly Pan Am, released music on Constellation Records; these groups are generally characterized by a melancholy and crescendo-driven style rooted in, among other genres, chamber music, musique concrète techniques and free jazz influences.

2000s–2010s: second and third waves

In the early 2000s, the term became divisive with both music critics and musicians, with it being seen at the time as falling out of favor. It became increasingly controversial as more critics outwardly condemned its use. Some of the bands for whom the term was most frequently assigned, including Cul de Sac, Tortoise, and Mogwai, rejected the label. The wide range of styles covered by the term, they and others have claimed, robbed it of its individuality.

As part of the second wave of post-rock, the bands Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, 65daysofstatic, This Will Destroy You, Do Make Say Think, and Mono became some of the more popular post-rock acts of the new millennium. Sigur Rós, with the release of Ágætis byrjun in 1999, became among the most well known post-rock bands of the 2000s due to the use of many of their tracks, particularly their 2005 single "Hoppípolla", in TV soundtracks and film trailers. These bands' popularity was attributed to a move towards a more conventional rock oriented sound with simpler song structures and increasing utilization of pop hooks, also being regarded as a new atmospheric style of indie rock.

Following a 13-year hiatus, experimental rock band Swans, who had been regarded as influencing post-rock, began releasing a number of albums that were described as post-rock, most notably To Be Kind which was acclaimed by AllMusic at the end of 2014.

Wider experimentation and blending of other genres have taken hold in the post-rock scene. Cult of Luna, Isis, Russian Circles, Palms, Deftones, and Pelican fused metal with post-rock styles, with the resulting sound being termed post-metal. More recently, sludge metal has grown and evolved to include (and in some cases fuse completely with) some elements of post-rock. This second wave of sludge metal has been pioneered by bands such as Giant Squid and Battle of Mice. This new sound is often seen on the label of Neurot Recordings. Similarly, bands such as Altar of Plagues, Lantlôs and Agalloch blend between post-rock and black metal, incorporating elements of the former while primarily using the latter. In some cases, this sort of experimentation and blending has gone beyond the fusion of post-rock with a single genre, as in the case of post-metal, in favor of an even wider embrace of disparate musical influences as it can be heard in bands like Deafheaven.