post-rock

The tradition & historical record

Post-rock is a subgenre of experimental rock that emphasizes texture, atmosphere, and non-traditional song structures over conventional rock techniques. Post-rock acts can often combine rock instrumentation and stylings with unorthodox elements, such as patterns and minimal arrangements, or electronics and digital production, as a means of enabling the exploration of textures, timbres and different styles. Vocals, when present, can be used as an instrumental layer, with many bands opting for entirely instrumental compositions, although some still engage with the verse–chorus form. The genre is associated with the indie and underground music scenes. The term post-rock was coined by music journalist Simon Reynolds and eventually popularized in his review of Bark Psychosis' 1994 album Hex. He later expanded the concept as music "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes". In the 2000s, the term narrowed to refer to bands oriented around dramatic and suspense-driven instrumental rock, making its continuing usage controversial among listeners and artists alike. Groups such as Talk Talk and Slint are credited with producing foundational works in the style in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The release of Tortoise's 1996 album Millions Now Living Will Never Die led to post-rock becoming an established term for the genre in music criticism and journalism. ¹

Post-rock emphasizes the exploration and use of textures, timbres, and non-rock influences. Rather than relying on traditional song structures or riffs, it—as a musical aesthetic—focuses on atmosphere and mood to create a musically evocative experience. Post-rock incorporates stylings and traits from a variety of musical genres and scenes, including indie rock and its forms like slowcore and math rock, as well as krautrock, ambient music, psychedelia, progressive rock, space rock, tape music, minimalist classical, British IDM, jazz (including avant-garde jazz and cool jazz), dub, post-punk, free jazz, contemporary classical and avant-garde electronica. Often, first wave post-rock groups exhibited influence from the krautrock of the 1970s, particularly the motorik, the characteristic krautrock rhythm, and its one- or two-chord melodicism. These influences were also pivotal for the substyle of ambient pop, where the framework of post-rock was applied to indie pop. Post-rock acts frequently blend traditional rock instrumentation and stylistic elements with electronic and digital production, using this combination to explore a wider range of textures, timbres, and musical styles. The genre originated in the indie and underground music scenes of the 1980s and 1990s in Europe and North America, but it became increasingly distinct from the conventions of indie rock of that era, while simultaneously influencing indie rock. ¹

Though typically performed using standard rock instrumentation—guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards—post-rock compositions often subvert the expected uses of these instruments, for example by employing guitars as noise generators or focusing on sonic texture rather than melody. However, instruments were often used in non-traditional ways, acting as a "palette of textures" rather than for their conventional rock roles. It can be lengthy and instrumental, containing repetitive build-ups of timbres, dynamics and textures, often making 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. Guitars, rather than serving melodic or riff-driven purposes, are often employed as tools for texture and atmosphere. Artists manipulate timbre through alternate tunings, effects like delay and distortion, EBows, and looping, sometimes processing guitars to the point of becoming unrecognizable. Drums and percussion in post-rock frequently defy traditional roles, drawing inspiration from krautrock's hypnotic "motorik" beats and dub's spacious, bass-heavy rhythms. It can feature, as is prominently the case in the first wave, multiple drum kits, irregular tempos, and/or minimalist patterns that prioritize mood over groove. The bass guitar often assumes a central role in shaping post-rock's atmospheric depth, diverging from standard rock's rhythmic lock with the bass drum, extending from post-punk. ¹

Vocals play a much lesser role in most post-rock and are sometimes entirely absent. When post-rock bands have vocalists, their performances are often non-traditional, with them employing vocals as purely instrumental efforts and incidental to the sound. Vocals are often presented as spoken word, found audio samples, or stylized delivery such as murmured or shouted passages. Bands often treat the voice as an additional instrument. Lyrics, if included, are often non-narrative, poetic, or opaque, reflecting themes of alienation, ambiguity, or abstraction. While the verse–chorus form is not exempt from the ethos of post-rock, in lieu of typical rock structures, groups make greater use of soundscapes and abstraction. 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". Songs in the genre can include climactic endings alongside buildups of textures and timbres, used to provide closure in otherwise linear compositions. This structural trope became a hallmark of second wave post-rock, where bands focused on dramatic, suspenseful instrumental rock; this usage of the term became controversial among both listeners and musicians. ¹

The term post-rock was coined by the English music journalist Simon Reynolds in a Melody Maker article in late 1993, which is the earliest instance of him using the term. He later employed it in a review of Bark Psychosis' 1994 album Hex, published in the March 1994 issue of Mojo. Reynolds further developed the concept in a May 1994 issue of The Wire, defining post-rock as "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: ¹

Perhaps 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 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". ¹

In music journalism and criticism, various retroactive examples have been given of precursors to post-rock. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Post-rock”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

post-rock is subgenre of rock music, often instrumental, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 20 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²