Post-rock

The term Post-Rock was coined by Simon Reynolds in issue 123 of The Wire (May 1994) to describe a sort of music "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords."

Originally used to describe the music of such bands as Stereolab, Disco Inferno[?], Seefeel[?], Bark Psychosis[?] and Pram[?], it spread out to be frequently used for all sorts of jazz-influenced, instrumental, electronica-added music made after 1994. As with all musical genres, the term is arguably inadequate: it is used for the music of Tortoise as well as that of Mogwai[?], two bands who have absolutely nothing in common besides the fact that their music is instrumental.

After the second Tortoise LP Millions now living will never die, this band became the main post-rock item. True, after Millions... lots of bands began to record, using the same sound as Tortoise and were correctly described as post-rock (there aren't too many famous examples of these bands, because they weren't really popular and were mostly called 'Tortoise rip-offs'). As diverse as Post-Rock is, so is Tortoise: one member of the band came from the Chicago jazz scene, another from the hardcore scene.

In the late nineties, Chicago became the home base of may different groups. John McEntire[?] (of Tortoise) became an important producer for lots of them, as well as Jim O'Rourke (of Brice-Glace[?], Gastr del Sol[?] and many more). Post-Rock began to range from very slow, guitar-ambient (for instance: the collective 'Boxhead Ensemble[?]', led by Michael Krassner[?], featuring many famous artist: Will Oldham[?], Jim O'Rourke, Jim White[?], Mick Turner[?], David Grubbs[?], to name a few) to up-tempo, electronic music (Stereolab, whose music is not largely instrumental).

By the early 2000s, the term had started to fall out of favour, while the major artists kept on making high quality recordings. The wide range of styles covered by the term had robbed it of its usefulness almost from the moment it was coined.

External Links

• Reynolds article: http://www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm
• Post-Rock.com: http://www.post-rock.com/