What is
post-rock? Or perhaps we should ask, to better reflect the provenance of most of today's bands,
Qu'est-ce que c'est le post-rock?
The Latin
post means 'after.' What does it mean to be 'after rock'? As we'll hear, for some bands it means playing music that is rock-like in its aesthetic sensibility on a wider range of instruments than is typical to rock music (Godspeed You! Black Emperor). For others, it can be using the instruments of rock to speak a different musical language (Fly Pan Am, Set Fire to Flames, Pelican)
. At least one other possibility is to amplify the gestures of rock into hyperbolic levels of emphasis: thus the fuzzy guitar becomes a nearly toneless wall of layered noise, and the song structure is stretched in length nearly to its breaking point in Nadja's "Now I Am Become Death ..."
Most of these bands have a keen sense of musical dynamics that, in and of itself, puts them outside, maybe
beyond, the genre of rock. The minutes and minutes of building volume, rhythm, and tension in "Static" reach an unbearable pitch until, like a flashbulb, it burns out instantaneously but leaves a softly fading afterimage burned into your eyes. The emotion these mostly Canadian post-rockers so eloquently express is, to me, this: the soft-fading light after the
petit mort.
(1) Fly Pan Am - Rompre L'Indifference de L'Inexitable Avant que L'On Vienne Rompre Le Sommeil de L'Iname
(2) Set Fire to Flames - Deja, Comme des Trous de Vent, Comme Reproduit
(3) Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Static
(4) Clogs - I Used to Do
(5) Nadja - Now I Am Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds
(6) Pelican - Last Day of Winter
(7) A Silver Mt. Zion - God Bless Our Dead Marines
(8) Hrsta - Beau Village
(9) Sigur Ros - Saeglopur
Get the playlist
here.
Photo: Godspeed You! Black Emperor
