5 posts tagged “post rock”

Not sparse enough to be ambient, too many live instruments for techno, too loopy for post rock, not loud enough to be shoegazer/dreampop...where exactly does Seefeel fit?

"Through You," from their first full-length, Quique, rides all of these genre lines pretty closely. There's plenty of guitar here, though it's all blurred and smeared and pushed way back in the mix, and it's pretty definitively non-rock guitar. There's a percussive element that could either be a heavily processed drum machine or drummer in a distant room. It builds slowly and steadily, but doesn't end much louder or more forceful than it began.

It's easy to see the lines of influence in retrospect, but sort of hard to see how they all wound up together. From the minimalism and pattern layering of 20th Century composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, to the insistent post-techno ryhthms of early Aphex Twin and, to the rich textures of everyone from Brian Eno to Kevin Shields, Seefeel was sort of a summation of a certain line of progress in the hitory of recorded music, where the focus was on feel, atmosphere, and tone rather than harmony, melody and rhythm. You can hear their own influence echoing today, rippling outward from the experimental territory they occupied, into deeper abstraction, and into more meditative rock/pop areas.

I think Disco Inferno is one of the best band names ever, especially since it belongs to a band that is completely undanceable and challenging on all levels, practically the opposite of all that actual disco music championed.

Disco Inferno is one of those bands that never really caught many people's attention, but made their mark nonetheless. They were difficult enough to repel casual listeners, yet had enough pop savvy to draw in those with an ear for the unusual. Equal parts nostalgic and futurist, they had a relatively brief career, featuring 3 full length albums and a smattering of EPs, starting from early-80s Manchester mimicry (in 1989) and ending with an odd fusion of experimental techniques and pop structure.

"Even The Sea Sides Against Us" comes from the 1994 album D.I. Go Pop (misleadingly titled, of course). Showcasing their love of sound collage, a loop of crowd noise and waves crashing against the shore fills the role of a percussion instrument, leaving bass, echoing guitar, vocals, and glittery keyboard fragments to flesh out the rest. The noise blurs and obscures in the same way that My Bloody Valentine's guitars do, with a roaring cascade of frequencies that mask other elements. The result is indistinct, yet lyrically more comprehensible than MBV. Many of Disco Inferno's techniques have been borrowed from other sources (MBV, hip hop, musique concrete and electronic music), and most have been re-borrowed by the handful of artists who have drawn inspiration from their pursuit of a singular vision.

Most remixes tackle the raw material of a single song, sometimes adding some additional elements of the remix producers creation, but generally keeping some relation to the original structure. But this remix by Sientific American gathers fragments from several tracks on the 1999 Red Stars Theory album Life in a Bubble Can Be Beautiful, and reassembles them as something entirely new, yet recognizable. It sounds like something the band could perform live, with the exception of a few stutter edits.

Red Stars Theory was an Pacific Northwest indie rock supergroup of sorts, featuring 764-Hero bassist James Bertram and Modest Mouse drummer Jeremiah Green, and a rotating cast of assorted other musicians. They made a lethargic and deliberate version of indie rock that bordered on post-rock, indebted as much to Mogwai and Tortoise as to their local contemporaries. This remix by Sientific American, a longtime fixture of the Seattle electronic scene, comes from the B-side of the Naima 7" single (yes, it's a John Coltrane cover) from 2000.

I am cursed. Or maybe this song is. Either way, as soon as I chose it as my song to upload today, the power on my block went out. As in, the exact same second I clicked on the upload button.

But the juice is back now.

The Roots of Orchis hail from San Diego, and play a deep and lethargic sort of instrumental hip hop, with a seasoning of post-rock and dub. I've seen them live once, when the group was composed of two bassists, a turntablist, a drummer, and a synth/sampler player. The poor club PA couldn't handle the insane amounts of low end being generated on stage. Their albums, Some Things Plural and Crooked Ceilings, are both excellent forays into a world that at one point would have been called trip hop.

This track comes from the Translation Music 3 compilation. Translation Music was originally released on Don Lee Records, by Jon Fee of the Rum Diary, in hand stamped manila envelopes. The third volume was released by Substandard, and was upgraded to jewel cases, though it lost some of its handmade charm in the process. The Roots of Orchis are veterans of the series, with a live track appearing on Vol. 1 and this Björk cover on Vol. 3.

(Full disclosure: Translation Music holds a special place in my heart partly because my old band appears on Vol. 2).

I'm posting this track in honor of the fact that I'm missing out on seeing Do Make Say Think live tonight, for mostly financial reasons. This is the second time they've come through somewhere near me, and the second time I've had to stay home.

"Minmin" is an excellent excercise in tension and restraint. The first five of its eight minutes are spent lazily drawing the outline of a groove, with the sparsest instrumentation possible, before exploding into a propulsive drumbeat and reversed tape loops. This Canadian group, like their compatriots in the loose collective of bands that include Godspeed you Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, excel at ensemble playing and density, making horn embellishments fit into guitar led freakouts with ease.