Mogwai - Young Team (1997)

Mogwai's Young Team is a landmark album in the post-rock genre; weaving intricate melodies into a giant wall of sound then going up against gentle atmospheres while building tension then giving way to a cathartic, almost violent release.

Mogwai - Young Team (1997; Chemikal Underground Records)

Gastr Del Sol - The Serpentine Similar (1993)

Extremely experimental in scope; an avant-garde folk project that meets a glossier post-rock aesthetic head-on, a winding snake of guitar arpeggio noodling and piano scales run up and down your spine.
Gastr del Sol - The Serpentine Similar (1993; Teenbeat Records)

June of 44 - Four Great Points (1998)

I have no idea what "post-rock" really means, I think we throw it around way too much these days. The term was coined by critic Simon Reynolds in a review of the record Hex by Bark Psychosis in an issue of The Wire back in May of '94 as a way to describe what he was hearing, he's quoted as saying post-rock is "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords", but that's not really saying a whole lot about bands with such disparate styles like Mogwai, Slint or Sigur Rós, who are all usually lumped in with the post-rock crowd.

A reductive way of describing post-rock could be as follows: bands that employ in their music such diverse influences like space rock, Krautrock, ambient, experimental rock, jazz, shoegaze, minimalism, math rock and tape music; then forcing it into the neater, all-encompassing sphere of "alternative rock". That's my definition and I'm sticking to it.

That brings us to June of 44- a more emo and math-based version of Slint; but more melodic in the post-hardcore vein of bands from the mid-90s (think Unwound or Fugazi) but with really, really awesome drumming (courtesy of Doug Scharin); the instrumentation is also stellar- mellow and lazy yet shiny and bright guitar work from Jeff Mueller and Sean Meadows and dual duty on bass and trumpet from Fred Erskine.

Check this shit out, post-rocker...

June of 44 - Four Great Points (1998; Quarterstick Records)

Boris - Flood (2000)

I only have a few Boris albums, but this is the one for me; it starts out with this repeated arpeggio riff that lasts a good six-and-a-half minutes before any other instrument appears, then slowly drums creep in, then...

...I'm not giving any more away. 

Listen.

I do recommend that you listen to this on really good headphones...

Boris - Flood (2000; Noble Label)
-link opens to YouTube-

Conductive Alliance - Water Glyphs (2010)

I love getting submissions because they're mostly pretty good. Chicago's Conductive Alliance is actually really good, they sound like an updated version of that city's once burgeoning post-rock scene; think a futuristic interpretation of bands like The Sea and Cake (but less jazzy), 90 Day Men (and less proggy) or Tortoise (less psychedelic) that was raised on pure pop melodies and electro beats- this would be my loose interpretation of their Water Glyphs EP, a seven-track suite that spans almost 27 minutes. It's a wonderfully crafted and unique blend of all the above styles that both reference their respective influences while never coming close to ripping them off and sheds the arty pretension some of those bands have been accused of; Conductive Alliance is way more accessible than those bands.

Anyhow, do yourself a favor and listen to this, I'm sure it'll be near the top of one of my year-end lists...

Conductive Alliance - Water Glyphs (2010; self-released)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Classic Years

Taking their name from a Japanese documentary about an outlaw motorcycle gang, Montreal's Godspeed You! Black Emperor (often stylized as GY!BE) are to me the best example of the term Post-Rock; a sprawling, cinematic grandeur set to music. They evoke wind-swept and desolate plains in one movement, then on to a post-apocalyptic crumbling cityscape a few minutes later and then back to a dense and forested, seemingly endless orchestration piece after that; all in the confines of one song (sometimes lasting just short of half an hour).

Started in 1994 by Efrim Menuck (guitar), Mauro Pezzente (bass) and Mike Moya (guitar); GY!BE would undergo so many line-up changes and configurations, (sometimes up to 20 members would be performing on stage at one time) the number of credited members for most of their albums would settle somewhere around nine. Adding cellist Norsola Johnson, guitarist David Bryant, Thea Pratt on French horn, violinist Sophie Trudeau, Thierry Amar on bass, percussionists Aidan Girt & Bruce Cawdron, Grayson Walker on keys, James Daytron on guitar, bassist Gregory Borys, multi-instrumentalist James Chau, some guy named simply "Christophe" and guitarist Roger Tellier-Craig, the full scope and tenor of the band's sound would adapt itself around the strengths of the musicians involved.

To listen to GY!BE is an activity in and of itself; what they demand from the listener is unlike any other musical experience I've encountered before or since. I'm basically posting their entire discography here, save for their early cassette-only release All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling (from 1994) and the 2004 Tiny Silver Hammers EP. My favorite of theirs (and my second favorite album by any band of the new millennium) is Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven; it's an hour-and-a-half, four-song magnum opus that runs the gamut from chamber music and classical ensemble pieces interspersed with post-rock guitars and bombastic drumming, building to explosive crescendos replete with field recordings; all the while experimenting with drony textures and and ambient passages.

If you like any of these albums, please support this band by buying their records or checking out their current (or "side") project A Silver Mt. Zion...

f#a#oo (1997; Constellation Records)

Slow Riot For New Zerø Kanada (1999; Constellation Records)

Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000; Constellation Records)

Yanqui U.X.O. (2002; Constellation Records)

Red Sparowes - At The Soundless Dawn (2005)

Los Angeles-based Red Sparowes don't fit as neatly into the post-rock category as say Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Explosions in the Sky; they share a commonality in that they can build slow-burning atmospheric jams into dizzying cinematic crescendos, but where those two bands are based in classical music and indie rock (respectively) Red Sparowes dip their toes into a more metallic well; after all they share members with bands like Isis and are on Neurosis' label. So there's your metal-influences.

At The Soundless Dawn is (purportedly) the story of the impending apocalypse set to music; the song titles themselves are one of the few clues to this because as most post-rock goes there are no words (except a few samples). It would be a full year and a half between the release of this record and Red Sparowes explanation of it; from an interview with Modern Fix:

"There is an underlying theme to this record. The literature on the subject is almost limitless, but it basically breaks down to this: There have previously been five “mass extinction events” on earth that have been scientifically realized, dating back from 440 million years ago. These events have resulted in the extinction of 19% - 54% of all species on earth at each specific time period. The first five events have been caused by natural elements, including the known impacts with meteors and the like. We are currently experiencing the sixth extinction event, which is the first one to be caused by a single species on our planet, which happens to be humanity."

That's some heavy shit. The epicness of this record is just as heavy...

Red Sparowes - At The Soundless Dawn (2005; Neurot Recordings)

Dirty Three - Ocean Songs (1998)

Besides being consummate musicians; Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White craft a sincere emotionality unlike no other, all without the use of words. Masters of their respective instruments (violin, guitar and drums) this Australian trio was founded in Melbourne in 1992 after the classically trained Ellis found being a schoolteacher to be a bit much. Attaching a guitar pickup to his violin... the story writes itself.

This may not be the consensus pick among fans as their best, but it's my favorite- as are most things with a nautical theme. Enjoy one of the most unique bands in music today, stuck somewhere between post-rock, slowcore and traditional folk...

Dirty Three - Ocean Songs (1998; Touch And Go Records)

Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You (2001)

Unwound was cut from the same mold as the two other '90s stalwart post-hardcore bands that got most of the attention; Fugazi and Quicksand. Unwound veered from the safer path those two took (albeit one by breaking up and the other maturing into one of the finest bands ever) and went a bit more avant in their approach.

They kept it subtle and airy at one end but made it noisy and grating on the other; taking the best attributes of post-punk and fusing it with the audacity of noise rock, all the while toeing the line between indie, post-hardcore and post-rock; this is definitely one of the best albums of the new millennium. It's a sprawling and expansive hour-and-seventeen minute affair that delves into both spacey atmospherics and punk rock riffing.

Bravo, Unwound. Nice way to go out- leave your fans wanting more and critics scratching their heads with the whole "what if?" question.

Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You (2001; Kill Rock Stars)

Hood - Structured Disasters (1996)

Hood's Structured Disasters is a compilation of some of their early stuff, pre-'96. If you're not familiar with Hood, they're a Leeds (UK) based lo-fi/post-rock/IDM/slowcore/shoegaze band that caught my attention for their collaboration work with Oakland's Doseone and Why? (for Hood's 2001 album Cold House).

This record is basically lots of 4-track recorded stuff; un-mastered, un-mixed, very lo-fi. Maybe intended to never see the light of day? I really like it, it sounds like stuff I record on my 4-track.

Check out the tape hiss...

Hood - Structured Disasters (1996; Happy Go Lucky Records)

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (1991)

Talk Talk was at first a new wavey synth dance band in the early '80s and morphed into pretentious art-rockers into the '90s, a move that appears (to the label heads at EMI) to be career suicide. I think it's one of the greatest stories of modern music: band makes Duran Duran-esque club tunes, band gets big record deal, band says "fuck off" to synthesizers and '80s excess, band makes three successive records the way they want to make them (1986's The Colour Of Spring, 1988's Spirit of Eden and this album in '91), band loses fans, record deal, etc. Yet band escapes from the industry somewhat unscathed, with suitcase full of money and unflappable creative license to make one of the landmark albums in the post-rock genre. 

I still haven't figured out what post-rock means, but I think this is it. It's actually closer to jazz than anything else. Laughing Stock, if anything- was one of the albums that metaphorically killed the '80s by smashing all barriers associated with what can be considered pop by deconstructing it by its constituent parts and re-assembling it into this sprawling and massive masterpiece.

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (1991; Polydor Records)

Efterklang - Tripper (2004)

I fell asleep to this album every night for about six months straight, a few years ago. It’s kind of unfamiliar as I listen to it awake, I’m sure there’s something in my subconscious it speaks to. I do remember having gentle dreams that gave way to a vivid awareness; first my visions were soft and out of focus, the words half-spoken.

Then cumulus clouds suddenly were forming and disappearing in mere seconds, suns setting and moons rising and then being whisked galaxies away to another planet- there seems to be a conversation going on somewhere above and behind me and I can’t turn fast enough to see where it’s coming from- is that an alien tongue? Maybe it’s Danish. I awaken, completely lost in my surroundings, that groggy half-second before you realize you’re alive and alone in the dark; not quite fright and not quite comfort. Silence. Deafening silence. But there’s an imprint in that silence, a pocket that used to hold a sound.

That sound was Efterklang’s Tripper. Now it’s gone. I’m back asleep...

Efterklang - Tripper (2004; The Leaf Label)

Slint - Spiderland (1991)

Next time you see me, please do me a favor and tell me how much of an idiot I am. I used to have an original LP copy of this that I got in the mid-to-late '90s, but sold it before I moved to California because "moving is really expensive and I need the money". Yeah, on second (and third and fourth) thought; I'd rather have this back. I've seen copies of it floating around eBay for around $40, so yeah- I'm an idiot (I probably got like 5 bucks for it, so that adds insult enough).

So what to say about Slint's Spiderland that hasn't been said already? Besides for the fact that it's considered a landmark album in both the early Post-Rock and (the more annoying genre tag of) Math Rock, it's an album that fucking rocks. Yeah, it's super dark, creepy, kinda eerie, full of emotional angst, it's methodical, meticulous and alienated... did I say creepy yet?

Just fucking download it. Then when you see me, do me that favor I asked of you. Then I can ridicule you and your shitty music library for not already owning this.

Slint - Spiderland (1991; Touch And Go Records)

Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet (2002)

Easily the most accessible release from Canadian post-rockers DMST; & Yet & Yet sees the band at a more relaxed, dare I jazzier pace than previous albums (and since). It’s way toned down as far as this band is concerned; they exercise a calm flow throughout the record with careful precision and uncomplicated noodling that never gets boring. 

The horns don’t blow you away on the song White Light Of and they don’t build every song to a dizzying crescendo and explode, it’s a lesson in refinement. Whether it’s the wordless singing of Soul And Onward, the bubbling synths, low-bottom bass and glitchy beats on the track Chinatown or hypnotic swirling of End of Music, the subtle build-up and short bursts of intensity on Reitschule or the majesty of drone during the album’s closer (Anything For Now), it’s a stunning offering from a band that continues to make excellent records, each one different from their last…

Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet (2002; Constellation Records)