Tell us about some Post-Rock albums. - Music

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HoldenM wrote:

What's the difference between post-rock and prog-rock? They both seem to incorporate complex, if existent song structuring; often skew on experimental, tend to be lengthier in terms of track duration, and often borders and exceeds self-indulgence.

And they're both pretty stagnant too. But aside from that they sound nothing alike, so that probably makes the genre distinction.

mickilennial
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65daysofstatic - The Fall of Math
Blueneck - Scars of the Midwest
British Sea Power - Man of Aran
Don Caballero - World Class Listening Problem
Early Day Miners - Offshore
Efterklang - Tripper
Exxasens - Polaris
Gifts From Enola - Loyal Eyes Betrayed the Mind
God Is an Astronaut - Far From Refuge
Grails - Burning Off Impurities
Hope of the States - The Lost Riots
Red Sparowes - The Fear Is Excruciating, but Therein Lies the Answer
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind
Toe - The Book About My Idle Plot on a Vague Anxiety

I've mentioned these before. I like them a lot.

Quote:

What's the difference between post-rock and prog-rock? They both seem to incorporate complex, if existent song structuring; often skew on experimental, tend to be lengthier in terms of track duration, and often borders and exceeds self-indulgence.

Traditional Progressive Rock doesn't originate from the post-punk movement nor incorporates complex textures; also Post-Rock isn't really complex in it's time signatures. It's more rooted into experimental music and ambient/avant-garde complexes.

Defago
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The way I see it, in progressive rock the music becomes the message itself, instead of a mean to communicate. As such, there is much complexity in the melodies (though not so many in the harmonies), with heavy use of modal keys and tempo and key changes. Quick tempos and impressive solos are also trademarks. There's also a penchant for very clean production.

Post-rock, IMO, and according to wiki to an extent, is the use of traditional rock instrumentation to make texture based music. This means, instead of having a guitar play chords, a bass play the bass notes and the drums play a constant beat, you have a guitar, a bass and a drumkit working together to achieve a certain atmosphere or texture. In a way, post-rock musicians aren't playing guitar traditionally, they're using a guitar to make pleasant sounds. This enables for very interesting sounds, but also for very pretentious douches and very boring music. It's pretty hard to define what is and what isn't post rock, though. There are MANY different bands playing way differently between them but which all fit as ''post rock''.

I feel as if post-rock had this kind of spectrum. On one end, you have Talk Talk influenced post-rock, more jazzy and minimal. On the other end, you have more Slint influenced post-rock, way more hardcore and rock based. Almost every post-rock record takes influence off both, but usually more from one side than the other, so I usually place them in my mental spectrum and order them as such. Storm & Stress, Don Caballero and most of David Pajo's projects are more hardcoreish, whereas Stereolab or Dirty Three have a more jazzy feel to them.

Just my two cents.

mickilennial
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Quote:

but also for very pretentious douches and very boring music.

Was this jab even necessary?

Defago
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Gowienczyk wrote:

Quote:

but also for very pretentious douches and very boring music.

Was this jab even necessary?

Um, yeah. Giving my opinion here. I love good post-rock to death, but it has some of the worst, most boring, most pretentious, avantgarde wannabe albums.

AlexZangari

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The Defago definition of pretentious: "anything that sounds artsy but I don't like."
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meccalecca
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Defago wrote:

Um, yeah. Giving my opinion here. I love good post-rock to death, but it has some of the worst, most boring, most pretentious, avantgarde wannabe albums.

Agreed. Post Rock and Prog have that in common. They can produce the most pretentious wankers.

From what I've heard, as much as I like them, the guys from Tortoise are insanely pretentious. but at least they're good
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Defago
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AlexZangari wrote:

The Defago definition of pretentious: "anything that sounds artsy but I don't like."

I wouldn't know how to define "pretentiousness" exactly. There are albums I consider pretentious which I like, though I mostly use it as a negative adjective for stuff I dislike. I'd say ELP is pretentious, for example. Or Scott Walker's latter albums. Or The Residents. I find the former to be too ambitious and overblown and "look at what I can do" without delivering much, while The Residents are just as ambitious and overblown, but they do deliver what they mean to.

meccalecca
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Defago wrote:

I wouldn't know how to define "pretentiousness" exactly. There are albums I consider pretentious which I like, though I mostly use it as a negative adjective for stuff I dislike. I'd say ELP is pretentious, for example. Or Scott Walker's latter albums. Or The Residents. I find the former to be too ambitious and overblown and "look at what I can do" without delivering much, while The Residents are just as ambitious and overblown, but they do deliver what they mean to.

I've never heard anyone call The Residents pretentious. Can a group of masked artists be pretentious? Like, wouldn't they want their identities known if they were pretentious?

I'm not trying to argue. I just think it's an interesting question.
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Defago
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I dunno, the whole "nobody knows who we are" is like crafting legends out of themselves, which is pretentious IMO. But then again we can't really know their motives, they might just want to be left unknown.