Class, etc. pt. 4 - Did post-rock "kill" indie? (Also, did it realign the "rhythmic impulse" towards an alternative to funk-based rhythms?)

My only thought is that I'm not sure about the "kill" part, since indie audiences and ethos both seemed to glide very smoothly into post-rock and related areas as a natural progression -- or, rather, a natural turn from the previous ethos.

I mean, I would say post rock was at its most popular around the turn of the century.

Witness the whole Lightning Bolt/Hella super-versatile drummer worship thing happening right now. I don't think the presence of Tortoise or what have you would have changed that outcome at all.

I don't think 'post-rock' killed 'indie' as much as 'indie' kinda subsumed 'post-rock', and become more of that introverted monolith so loved/hated. Replace 'post-rock' with 'butt-rock' or 'exotica' (depending on the circle), and you'll find the formula still kinda holds.

Whether seeking out abstract, extreme, or exotic musicianship is just another side road trying to branch in the opposite direction as 'pop' is a debate I'll leave up to you guys.

http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt521.html

there's always lot's of wake surfers.

just like you (donut bitch) said... it's in every little nook and cranny scene that comes and goes...

did post-rock's jazz cool conventional musicianship kill the silly and unconventional approaches? maybe a little... but think of chicago and midwestness... smog and palace remained pretty large. watch all that emo sweater style braid, capnjazz, joan of arc, promise ring stuff that really is indie, but it's fans would rather fly a punk-style flag over it. (argh.) there was still plenty of indie as guitar bonk under the gullet.

?

post-rock as that style still looms... plenty of folks are digging on aerogramme's latest. and who's to say that all this hippie trance rock really isn't just post-rock with more drugs and drum circle in tow?

what am i talking about again?
m.

(this makes me sad, as Hella are actually the far more interesting band, but anyway...)

Lost me there.

as to the issue of class or racial shifts inherent in the post-rock phenomena, i can't say i see it. to my eyes, the prototypical "INDIE ROCK" band was pavement, whose singer went to university of virginia and as a rule wrote excrutiatingly literate and abstract lyrics. follow up to the modern day with joan of arc and the like.

isn't part of what separates indie rock from alt/radio rock a certain "intelligence" ("intelligent rock music"! oh god) or, in darker form, "smartypants-ness"? in the lyrical content, singing style, musical arrangements, diffident attitude, etc.? indie rock and post-rock BOTH went to college, but indie rock majored in womens studies and post-rock did the world music thing. msp is right to draw a vague line from post-rock straight to the hippie jam. fans of that style can spout useless trivia about their favorite bands and shows just like everyone on this board.

in light of all this, i move that we rename "indie rock" as "intelligent rock music", or "IRM" for short. this has been done once before, and to great effect!!

(on the racial tip, indie rock and post-rock are basically all white all of the time with very few exceptions (members of tortoise, 90 day men, etc) and that hasn't changed nor do i see how/when it will.)

more post-rock on the "progressive" history of the 90s
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt52.html

...the "whatever" in question is mainly "super-cherry vintage analogue synths" & accompanying deep-poseur dedication to various obscure microphones (SovTek was trendy for a year or two), community-determined era-based fetishes ("the '70s were so weird!"), loosely understood/expressed aesthetic stances, etc. All this recently became a more complicated issue for me when I opened for T*rt*ise and they were effin' great guys. For me the fact remains however that once the stench of conoisseur-ism has wafted into a room (the room in question here being "indie"), that room hasn't got long before it stinks to high heaven.

Jess you just did this to see if you could get me worked up.

or economic status?

cause i see post-rock being more involved with schooling and technique than indie... but i don't think class really has much to do with it. you can be poor as butt ass and still get raised on "high" music... i mean shit... if you're like me and your folks studied music in college, you know what government cheese is all about!

will some tooling, you can pull any sound you want out of cheap shit. take one 15 watt fender practice amp ($20 ebay), one delay pedal (<$100), and one sk-1 casio keyboard ($20 ebay) and you've got something that sounds not so different from a $500 korg....
m.

(chops cost no money of course. but you can't deny there's a difference between a bunch of hairy hessians obsessively practicing slayer riffs and solos and a guy who can play vibes like bobby hutcherson.)

(okay, no one in a post-rock band can play vibes like bobby hutcherson.)

(also, i'm purposefully defining "post-rock" as the chicago-axis and friends and travellers, as opposed to dream-rock/electronica/too pure types. and my beloved disco inferno.)

but growing up here... lower class = poor. upper class = rich.

?
m.

new money vs. old money fer instance.

That's never the case when even the gov'ment cheese set can bring an interesting aesthetic to the table, or create an art movement... it's a matter of your definition of class, really. For the purposes of discussing rock and roll, I think we can (should?) agree that actual money is not the capital that class is based on.

Distinction without a difference! or, rather, the difference is largely cosmetic

msp, you're talking about 140 bucks BEFORE recording costs - remember that the era Jess is recalling was pre-home-Pro-Tools an' shit - and you can't go recording the post-rock on a boombox. or even a four-track. no no no. it must be all-analog recording into ribbon mics in a big room with low humidity so the drums don't blah blah blah, etc etc martini-sippin' etc

This post-rock = money thing is another strawman thot up by the denziens of ILM to discredit something that's almost exactly the same as the thing they're defending from it! Lame.

now i see where your coming from.... and even with my fake-korg special #3 there's still a difference. i suppose when you do talk about being a connoisseur, it's all about the brands and labels. sound is almost irrelevant. "oh shit, it's same organ vanilla fudge used to ...."

and that would be considerably different from smog's earlier stuff, for example. (or am i throwing weirdness into the exchange by using a lo-fi example?)

(note how his records changed with jim o'rourke.... ???)
m.

I'd argue but I have no idea what you just said

(also, is it just me or do you take on a really hostile tone when you disagree with me? if this is a personal thing, then let's not fuckin' discuss it: how terribly boring.)

i like jim o.
m.

big room with low humidity so the drums don't blah blah blah, etc etc martini-sippin' etc

See, that's a class judgement right there, and you made it, not anyone else. It may or may not be present in the music. Result: inconclusive. But it's obvious you're bringing a lot of your own class baggage into this.

I don't think that Tortoise or GSY!BE are particularly rolling in cash tho. Neither are their fans for that matter - mostly Arts students or struggling musicians in my experience.

There's a argument to say that these guys are rich in SYMBOLIC capital precisely because they are denied real money. Basically, they are disproportially cool, because they are not financially successful.

okay, on to values:

...the "whatever" in question is mainly "super-cherry vintage analogue synths" caring about/being interested in equipment = MATERIALISM?

& accompanying deep-poseur dedication = AUTHENTICITY? (so funny to see this as a positive value on ILM again)

...to various obscure microphones = MATERIALISM again, maybe AUTHENTICITY or OBSCURITY as values too.

(SovTek was trendy for a year or two) = BRAND-NAME FETISHISM and/or LATE-PERIOD CAPITALISM (uh, did SovTek make mics?)

community-determined = wait so they're into COMMUNITY and yet are MATERIALISTS/CAPITALISTS?

era-based fetishes ("the '70s were so weird!") = AUTHENTICITY, HISTORICAL REVISIONISM, "P.C."

loosely understood/expressed aesthetic stances, etc. = ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

For me the fact remains however that once the stench of conoisseur-ism has wafted into a room (the room in question here being "indie"), that room hasn't got long before it stinks to high heaven. oh no defend the barricades! Inauthentic post-rockers are at the gates!

but the whole "I-am-a-connoisseur" post-rock stance (which, amusingly, grows out of indie rock's cult-like dedication to thrift store shopping) IS a class issue! indie rock loudly insists that you don't need anything besides a good idea to make a great record; post-rock of necessity MUST HAVE MONEY = IF YOU DON'T RECORD LIKE ME, YOU MUST BE RICH!

Well, that Mouse on Mars comp is called "Rost Pocks"...

(Sure, Shrimper records wasn't exactly an upper/middle class venture, but neither is a lot of experimental 'intelligent' rock)

...the "whatever" in question is mainly "super-cherry vintage analogue synths" caring about/being interested in equipment = MATERIALISM?

no, my complaint isn't "it's materialistic" - it's "it's conoisseurism," which icks me out

loosely understood/expressed aesthetic stances, etc. = ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

no: anti-dilettantism, I'm about as pro-intellectual as you can get: my complaint is not the presence of aesthetic stances, but the misunderstanding thereof

but the whole "I-am-a-connoisseur" post-rock stance (which, amusingly, grows out of indie rock's cult-like dedication to thrift store shopping) IS a class issue! indie rock loudly insists that you don't need anything besides a good idea to make a great record; post-rock of necessity MUST HAVE MONEY = IF YOU DON'T RECORD LIKE ME, YOU MUST BE RICH!

No - my last album cost quite a bit to record, so that's a red herring - that's not what I'm saying, at all. I think, honestly and without outside issues, that "sound quality" & associated tropes have made for lots of uninteresting records. Seldom in greater clumps than when suddenly there were tons of instrumental rock combos who'd just discovered 12/8 and thought they were the first people on the planet to notice that Miles Davis was cool.

BUT OF COURSE ALL THIS IS JUST MY OPINION

So you're a populist?

"it's conoisseurism," which icks me out

Again, that's just you. And again, the only class issue any of this brings up is yours.

And btw, why should exclusivity be related entirely to class?

That, in of itself, is worthy of a good debate.. and I think has been on ILM.

minus the Bobby Brown

clean as your asshole after a long shower.

chops cost a great deal of money. An hour spent playing guitar is an hour not spent at work. Disposable time is a very precious commodity; perhaps the most precious.

My take on this is pretty much Alex's, and is basically the same thing I was saying on Class#2. In the early-nineties a big muscly rock version of the underground momentarily won out; post-rock and a lot of related mellow/thinky material struck me as a reaction to that. You can even map this out in a physical sense: on the other thread Matos was talking about how, circa 94-95, suddenly people were starting mosh pits at fucking pop shows -- actually physically claiming the space that used to belong to "indie" in a slightly different form. It seems natural to me that the indie audience would take the cue already set up by post-shoegazing British post-rocky things, from Disco Inferno to Too Pure, and basically go home and relax with the Chicago-axis stuff, which was near-explicitly against everything those newly-arrived "moshing to Liz Phair" audiences were looking for:

- warm and friendly (the moshers wanted fiery and rocking)
- glossy (the moshers wanted raw)
- bubbly electronics (the moshers wanted power chords)
- polite, medidtative, "intellectual" (the moshers wanted screams)
- funky / jazzy (the moshers wanted the rock)
- but not too funky (cause then you could bump around to it again!)

It was a pretty / thinky / pacifict genre. And I really, really went for it. I mean, my second or third year in college here, probably 30% of the records I bought had a one-time member of either Tortoise or Stereolab doing something on them, or at least Rob Mazurek playing cornet. It was great, and served its purpose, and was, I think, a wonderful and range-expanding corrective to the rock attitudes that had a hold on "indie" -- it introduced genuinely new things to an indie community that had long been rejecting those things, and that exploration was really productive and fascinating for a while.

I mean, hell, this period is in part responsible for bands that consider themselves "indie" making any attempt whatsoever to have their actual records sound nice and interesting! It's responsible for indie kids taking any interest in texture and production; it's responsible for indie kids taking an interest in any form of composition beyond the four-chord punk template; it's responsible for indie's rockers' easing up on writing off electronics, folk, world music, jazz, the avant-garde, fluffy 70s records, etc., etc., and actually considering that there might be something beyond punk to engage with. Okay, granted: that's all hyperbole, but I honestly think those things are a large part of why the audiences found post-rock so brilliant. Listen to a hundred alt-rock records and then put on Millions Now Living Will Never Die, and you'll see what I mean; make fun of them (hahaha "us," sort of) if you want, but for plenty of people who'd been growing up in the context of rock and pop records, this stuff was big and broadening.

And then it calcified in a way that ceased to be quite as productive, because it had served its purpose already; at this point most post-rock records sound perfectly pleasant, but they're no longer doing anything surprising. C'est la vie.

for plenty of people who'd been growing up in the context of rock and pop records, this stuff was big and broadening

For the musicians themselves, even. Hell, they weren't just doing it as a public service. And the Chicago-style post rock sounds a little thin now not because it's served its purpose for us, but because it's becoming a little repetitive for the bands themselves.

By the way, for general top-level evidence of this movement in action, just look at the careers of Pavement and Radiohead:

Pavement: Start off with dingy four-track slop. Wind up making a sort of alt-rock record that gets them lots of attention and I'll bet has some of those high-school moshers showing up to their gigs. Aha! Gradual retreat into airy, obtuse pop, culminating in Nigel Godrich and Terror Twilight.

Radiohead: Starts directly off with the lots-of-attention alt-rock and the bourgeoise-listener contingent "indie" types are usually keen not to have to bother with. Tries to expand it. Aha! Nigel Godrich comes in again, and things move in an artier, headier direction, culminating with two obtuse, glossy, way-"intellectual" "they're like Joyce" electronics-heavy records. Radiohead's progression is like post-rock in a nutshell, only after post-rock had already happened and thus slightly less impressive.

The underlying thread to both of those narratives is that the underground, as of the mid-90s, wanted to be left alone. Yeah, insular, oppositional, fine -- there's certainly room to criticize indie on these grounds. But it's hard to think of any genre that, if faced with the sudden popular attention "alternative" got during that period, wouldn't have the urge to shift the camp over to somewhere quieter. At root, this is a good impulse, and it's what the era's obsession with "selling out" was all about: now that everyone's discovered you, you could stick around and perform for their entertainment, or you can declare that spot well and truly taken care of and look for somewhere new to explore.

(If only indie would decide that right now about stuff like the Flaming Lips and Wilco! "Everyone's already riding that train, how about erecting a new line?")

I'd type more (ideally, something that's not hung up on phrase usage), but I fear that this'll be swallowed by another 20+ posts if I don't submit until I'm done athinkin'. Yip!

(Yay! Only 3!)

< /THE DUDE>

Hahaha, that description fits me to a tee!

at Fullerton and California
California and Sacramento
at Fullerton and Damen and
Diversely

Dave: I feel bad about using the term "withdraw" now, because I think it's more complex than that. It's partly a withdrawl, yes, but also an impulse to just move house. If indie had just continued down the alt-rock path, everyone jockying for label deals and growing crowds, people would be way more pissed off with the world of Offsprings it'd have come down to, right? I think there was value in packing up and looking for a new and surprising place to set up camp.

Stencil: (a) If you're into indie, post-rock looks like nothing in retrospect; "this just sounds like Neu!," you can say, as if indie-rockers by and large would have a clue who Neu! even were if not for post-rock. (b) If you were already listening to a lot of the stuff post-rock brought into the fold, I can imagine it would just sound like a watery amalgam that thought way too much of itself -- "this just sounds like Seefeel with noodly bass." (c) Post-rock isn't exciting, and this seems to be a moment where everyone's a little starved for excitement -- post-rock is meditative and sleepy and mostly good for lying in bed, stoned. (d) It was relatively recently that post-rock outstayed its welcome, so give it a few years of "fuck no not post-rock!" before people are able to quit driving the nails in its coffin, allowing those who liked it to go "yeah, that was okay" and those who didn't to be completely indifferent.

Possibly useful tangent: in my creative writing class, a few folks took SEVERE umbrage at a particular student poem we workshopped. It used a John Ashberry poem as a template, and mirrored a lot of the obfuscation and (seeming) randomness that typifies Ashberry's work (and I hope I don't offend those of y'all that know Ashberry's work better than I). During the discussion, only 2 folks bothered to really say anything of real substance re: what the poem was saying & how it was saying it and yadda yadda. The other 9 folks in the class either A) sat back, befuddled, B) talked about how the poem was "pretentious" and that different, more direct & concise language should be used in getting the point across, or C) make insulting, ignorant, disparaging remarks about the poet (something along the lines of "fuck being a pretentious nerd; I wanna actually HAVE a life"). Being one of the two folks in the class that actually was able to talk about the poem (and also being a fan of the poem), I was trying to say something along the lines of: "well, just because you didn't understand it doesn't devalue the poem, and there's no reason @ all to set up some bullshit nerd / regular person schism just because you feel intimidated by this thing you don't understand", but they weren't having it, and I wasn't going to try and push this point w/ folks (one or two in particular) that just didn't want to accept that.

Make what you will of that li'l anecdote.

As for Neu!, I admit that I wouldn't know about them if it wasn't for Ciccone Youth! ; )

I think there's some moments on Tortoise's first couple records that still sound about as exciting to me today as when I first heard 'em. Then again, I like free jazz. I guess it's just no fun when the pendulum swings the other way.

But why did post-rock become boring? In my experience, it's because expectations were so high for constant innovation. Part of the reason why TNT and Dots and Loops totally blew me away was not only that I'd heard nothing like 'em before, but also that they were miles away from Tortoise and Stereolab's prior albums. I was disappointed with the follow-ups because, in repeating themselves, the excitement of "What will they do next?" was gone. But that's hardly the fault of the genre itself, which I'd argue is no different from other strains of indie rock in its tendency to stagnate. (Superchunk and Guided by Voices keep chugging along, making the same record for over ten years now, and nobody's complaining about hooky indie guitar-rock getting old quickly.)

Post rock was the result of natural reaction to the indie that came before. The music was simple, so they decided to try more complicated structures. Do the evolution, baby. Besides, if post rock "took over," and everyone collectively decided to ignore anything else that was happening, that wasn't their fault.

If you've heard post-rock in the Tortoise vein and not liked it, then I guess all I can say is "to each their own." However, being a sucker for jazz harmonies, electronics, mesmerizing grooves, and catchy-as-fuck melodic lines, I find a lot of it to be FUN FUN FUN.

Right on. People have to keep in mind the origins of Tortoise started with a couple of people fxcking around with a 4 track, someone saying they could have some free time in a studio during off hours, someoone saying if it sounds good I will press a 7" and then whammo for some weird reason it catches on, eventually more than the people involved main project.

By the time the first Tortoise full length was out, it took about a year or so, really up until their 2nd record to come out before people started acting all batty about it.

Around this same time ALOT of artists started selling started selling much more. I think a whole lot of people that came from whatever "indie" was that got into Tortoise or Stereolab started listening to Autechre, Aphex Twin, etc. around that same time.

It seems that people want to only think of "indie" as being rock music. Where do labels such as Chocolate Industries, Schemetic, Kompakt, Def Jux, etc. fit into this whole thing?

Stencil, you have nailed my big ol' fucking beef w/ my class (and with impatient haters in general) - if you're wading into waters you aren't familar with, be braced for things getting a bit dicey and uncomfortable, but DO NOT shut down and react myopically to this discomfort, and simply accept that there's shit you might not get with, and (lord) don't think there's something wrong w/ you or it because of this lack of affinity. (I'm not talking about specific people, of course, and I'm certainly not trying to surreptitiously pick fights w/ folks on this thread, because I love you all like brothers & sisters my parents didn't plan on having.) (And, y'know, this sounds a lot more pretentious and didactic than I wanted it to, so feel free to pretend I peppered this paragraph w/ winky faces.)

Yeah, actually, John, the poem the student wrote was based on a poem from that collection. The assignment was to take a modern-day poet's work and translate it. Obviously, he lost a few folks in the translation.

Yeah...but they are indie, correctumundo? 50 to 75k of records is a hell of alot more than Albert Ayler sold in his lifetime, I would imagine, it is still an achievement of some kind. It is all relative to big biz, i'll grant you that.

You don't think that many of the people that listened to Tortoise didn't get exposed to Luke Vibert or Autechre for the first time from the remixes? Some had to...perhaps not all, but definitely some did. Mind you it also corresponds with the tech boom, so who can say.

I'm not sure when or where I first came in contact with Autechre and some other electronic music, but I can say that it was around the same time Tortoise became popular (in a relative sense). Of course, alot of the warp music wasn't that available in the US until around that time either.

Both of these were at least linked by that old post-rock.com web site that used to be on the web.

Crescent -- It is all real lofi sounding, no protools here no siree. I like their weird spoken loop music the best. "There is no matter."

Third Eye Foundation -- Ghost (and probably before, but I haven't found the first two.) Matt Elliott made "Ghost" on a shitty old Yamaha sampler. After "Ghost" he got a better sampler and the sound wasn't quite as lofi, but the music was good.

No, but only because he wouldn't understand that I mean it in the best way possible. I would, however, call Steely Dan whitewashed right to Donald Fagen's face, and I think he'd get it.

hstencil: But *where* do those bands fit into the general reputation of post-rock? Are they better liked because they're LOUD and ROUGH? Or do they still get tagged as pretentious because of their hipster affect? (Obv. GBYE! does, quite frequently.) I guess I'm curious if J0hn -- if he comes back here -- sees a qualitative difference.

(You may be right, Kenan, about the clean-jazz sound.)

Kenan, I don't think it's very smart to assume that you know how Fagen would react to you calling his music "whitewashed." The racial implications there are pretty damning, and I could see how even a white musician would be offended by it.

Tortoise guitarist, and more importantly for Hstencil's argument, member of AACM (which gives him Jazz Cred).

Ugh, jaymc, wish you'd rephrase that. I don't think Parker studied a the AACM school for "jazz cred."

I don't think it had to be a direct link. Think about this, how much did having the ability to surf out for information on artists effect what you listened to during this time? I know it had a great effect on me.

No, no, I know. I'm just saying that if anyone dared to criticize Tortoise's jazz-authenticity, they could easily point to Parker. To an outsider, his AACM affiliation (as well as his race) DOES give him "jazz cred" -- regardless of how Parker himself thinks about it. But Alex knows who he is, anyway, so I'm droppin' it.

Put it this way, have you ever heard of metaphor? I would hope so since you were making one (i.e. you can't paint a sound).

Man, I was all ready to argue with nabisco about this but then he left himself an out at the end. Oh well, still worth pointing out that there tons of good bands in operation on the indie scene before Tortoise/Chicago that had moved beyond "punk": Fish & Roses, Sun City Girls, Phantom Toolbooth, Slovenly, OWT, Thinking Fellers ... all spring to mind as bands indebted to the music nabisco claims was "written off". In fact even in Chicago we had Repulse Kava and Shrimp Boat, mining different strains of jazz, folk, and experimental. Also, didn't the whole scene revolving around Kramer and Shimmy-Disc represent a strain of indie with a strong attention to recording quality years before it became associated with those Chicago fellers?

In any case, I agree with the - rather obvious notion - that the folks involved didn't just wake up one day with a notion of post-rock music fully formed in their head. I remember bumping into B*ndy Br*wn once after Bastro had sort of become Gastr, and he said something to the effect of "Man, you should hear the stuff we're doing, it sounds like Yes!". Possibly joking, but in his mind anyway it was maybe an extension of prog-rock tendencies. Also I remember those guys being way into the first Don Caballero single, which probably along with Breadwinner and other math-rock represented as much of a signpost as other more esoteric music. I do think the hallmark of post-rock as it came to be in Chicago was the stripping away of the voice. I mean that's where the music gets ascribed this seeming intellectualism, isn't it? There isn't a vocal narrative, so the listener is supposed to concentrate on the music.

I think its dominance is rooted in what SFJ referred to on Pt. 2 as "The alpha dogs push the rest of the pack". The question is, how did Tortoise become an alpha dog, when a lot of other less successful bands had been just as interested in exploring some of the strands of music that they were? I'm not sure but I remember when they made the cover of the Wire back in March of '96 it seemed like a big deal here. And actually just looking back, here's a list of artists featured on the cover of the Wire in the preceding 12 months: Talvin Singh, Howie B, Durutti Column, Marc Almond, Jah Wobble, Brian Eno, DJ Spooky, Main, Natacha Atlas, Scott Walker, Aphex Twin, Tricky.

Now, if you look at that list, Tortoise is the only American group (Scott Walker doesn't count). The only artists that could be considered indie are probably Durutti Column (more like nostalgia at that point), and the Main guy, who by that point wasn't making anything like the guitar-based music of Loop. I don't know, I think for folks in guitar-based indie rock bands in America it must have seemed exciting to see one of "their own" (as mentioned, all the Tortoise guys coming from more guitar oriented groups) receiving that degree of critical approbation. So whereas in the past you always had a few interesting groups experimenting outside the post-punk template, now you had a heck of a lot more.

Or something. Well I guess I'll post this and read the no doubt 20 new posts...

BTW, hstencil, you have already used up your alloted ration of exclaimation points for the night. From now on you will be charged.

But he's black right? That's why he doesn't count?

I think for folks in guitar-based indie rock bands in America it must have seemed exciting to see one of "their own" (as mentioned, all the Tortoise guys coming from more guitar oriented groups) receiving that degree of critical approbation.

Why should Tortoise or American indie folks care about cultural validation from The Wire? This seems a bit suspicious...

Not that the Wire represented the apex of anything, but yeah I think there was a buzz about it, and sort of tied into jess point. I dunno I guess I wanted to contribute a couple thoughts but the thread had long since derailed. Sort of sad really.

By 'cultural validation' I mean that the band needed the thumbs up from a bunch of Rock/Jazz critics to feel a buzz. I know that is a gross simplification, and probably a great injustice to the band, whom I actually really like...

But I guess I'm thinking about a conversation I had with Manitoba, he was talking about how he had never really heard of The Wire until he became 'famous' - and how he finds it unreadable, exclusive, elitist - but more importantly, for him, irrelevant.

It's not too complimentary to culture, either.

please do point me in the direction of some lo-fi post-rock played on shitty instruments though

Flying Saucer Attack?

That's my vision of what I like in postrock, something that Mogwai and tha Dirty Three picked up on as well.

The promise it held out was that it really was unmoored from tradition, opening spaces, creating alternate paths, taking the emotionally complex turn from hardcore, maturing almost.

The Biblesilver Changes into Shiner one-two punch still knocks me out. And the class signifiers weren't bougie at all, nor self-consciously intellegentsia middle-class, but more sortof disaffected gothy drama-poets fucking around in the lower suburbs and feeling pain. But not "oh we're so much better" pain but more like Duckie in Pretty in Pink young & horny & tryina figure it all out while feeling hemmed and limited by their surroundings. A sorta "this? this *can't* be all there is" intro-extroversion and romanticization of the everyday.

How that transformed into something else is a story I hardly feel qualified to deal with -- stencil, please help.

Even talking Coctails - > Sea & Cake is similarly.. huh? (Shrimp Boat feels way more obvious). Or for that matter the evolution of Red Red Meat (who remembers them? who loves star over the manger? I do!*) from country-core to post-sperimentlaism.

*or did. haven't listened in years.

A-and that's not even to mention LUNGFISH who are like what, the missing link? (between what? everything!)

lungfish are emo

Ruby Falls = NYC, not Louisville (band existed before meeting the Rodan folx)
Sonora Pine, Retsin = post Rodan (altho I do think you bring up an important point by introducing Tara into the discussion).

And the class signifiers weren't bougie at all, nor self-consciously intellegentsia middle-class, but more sortof disaffected gothy drama-poets fucking around in the lower suburbs and feeling pain. But not "oh we're so much better" pain but more like Duckie in Pretty in Pink young & horny & tryina figure it all out while feeling hemmed and limited by their surroundings. A sorta "this? this *can't* be all there is" intro-extroversion and romanticization of the everyday.

OTM. Okay yeah so "The Everyday World of Bodies" is a direct Glass rip-off (tho not as much as the Rachel's stuff would prove to be). But you know what? Rodan was mostly made up of lower-middle-class Louisville kids discovering art/music/ideas on their own (cuz there sure wasn't a lot of it in L'ville!). The L'ville scene has ALWAYS been a weird dichotomy between the rich kids and the kids from the other side of the tracks (Grubbs vs. McMahon - or maybe Hstencil vs. Derek Snodgrass [not that I have anything against Derek, he was a good friend, but he comes from a different, less priveleged background than me]). Still I don't think of Rodan and their many offshoot bands as being that related to the Chicago post-rock thing (if it is a thing) musically. There was a certain affinity there, but I think that was more an indie-comraderie thing. The Louisville thing stemmed more out of a sort of post-hardcore isolation.

Even talking Coctails - > Sea & Cake is similarly.. huh? (Shrimp Boat feels way more obvious).

Shrimp Boat ---> Sea & Cake = Eric and Sam
Coctails ----> S&C = just Archer
Coctails were way more stylistcally all over the place, not to mention had a longer career, than SB.

Or for that matter the evolution of Red Red Meat (who remembers them? who loves star over the manger? I do!*) from country-core to post-sperimentlaism.

Couldn't tell you much about them, was never into 'em.

Lungfish grew outta D.C./Baltimore hardcore (specifcally the B'more band Reptile House) and have way more musical affinities with those scenes than what I think we're discussing here. But a good band that bridged a lot of disparate stuff, to be sure.

[oh yes, early louisville into chicago post-rock carrying hip-hop rhythms more effectively than anything since? though destroying their ability to make you move yr. booty?]

(maybe we can treat this whole thing as hardcore goes uptown displacing whatever was there before? i mean, what is the chicago thing except Dischord but slower and with a better sense of history?)

(I always danced to Rodan, there is footage to prove it)

Bullshit. You don't hurt what came before. It's set in vinyl. There's no hurting it. There's only growing pains.

And as for emotional disconnection, that seems odd to say. Some of the most emotionally affecting music I've ever heard is by Burt Bacarach, or George Gershwin (not to give too much of a nod to Gier). Since when does lived experience equal nasty hard rock? Or un-polished songplaying? Since punk, that's when. It's as artificial a construct as any, and it's bullshit.

I think the brave people who tore away from the 80's indie aesthetic were increasing possibilities, not limiting them. And I don't think that's just a matter of opinion.

When we have discussions like this everything always comes back to who does or doesn't like what music, but surely that only distracts from just pointing out what the trends were in the first place. In Chicago in the early 90s the focus of "the music scene" was on rock bands at the Metro; in the late 90s it was post-rock at the Bottle, brazilian jazz records in the Reader. "Hometown favorites" went from Billy Corgan and Loud Lucy to Ken Vandermark and John McEntire. And when you're trying to figure out what that meant and what it accomplished, I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to focus on who was working up to it earlier. Most of the people who own Shrimp Boat records don't own Coctails records: what I'm trying to get at is what brought them over.

When we have discussions like this everything always comes back to who does or doesn't like what music, but surely that only distracts from just pointing out what the trends were in the first place. In Chicago in the early 90s the focus of "the music scene" was on rock bands at the Metro; in the late 90s it was post-rock at the Bottle, brazilian jazz records in the Reader. "Hometown favorites" went from Billy Corgan and Loud Lucy to Ken Vandermark and John McEntire. And when you're trying to figure out what that meant and what it accomplished, I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to focus on who was working up to it earlier. Most of the people who own Sea and Cake records don't own Shrimp Boat records: what I'm trying to get at is what brought them over.

STOP THE PRESSES! Indie Rock as pre-indicator of late 1990s bubble bursting!

(nabisco, I'm making a funny, but you're totally right.)

But the people then were writing music, not history. The trends themselves were about who likes what. Right?

that's the entrance of idm/electronica into the deal.

the schematic dudes were very knowledgable club headz ... ravers who kept moving further out... early tortoise "why we fight" could definitely fit into a set with boards of canada and all that abstract hip-hop and abstract experimental electronica ... you had groups like to rococo rot and four tet and fridge doing very wild stuff playing to both audiences... it's all three clicks and a sampler away....

(of post-rock) "not quite dead yet!"

dave r,
damn, what a harsh bunch in your poetry class. i can't believe they'd go so personal and accuse that person of being a nerd. sounds like the beginning of 2001. nothing like bashing something you don't understand.
m.

ps jeez it's hard to keep up in this thread...

So like why should I listen to tortoise for rhythmic fuckery when Autechre do it so much better?

Oh and Kenan yeah, I'm not arguing that "lived experience = poor sound quality" but at that moment in post-rock's development I get the feeling you lost both together.

I don't remember Kevin Coultas being that in to hip-hop, but at the time he worked at a record store, so I'm sure he was exposed to a lot of it. He did let me borrow a lot of Nick Cave and Charles Mingus from him back then.

hardcore of the 90's (sometimes very different than hardcore of the 80's) was very influenced by funk and reggae... anybody got some uoa gravity 12" for some dub love? the strange timings and mutating tempos... etc... fugazi has got some definite feel for groove... hardcore of the 90's....post-hardcore some might call it had plenty of brain power. spazz and grindcore was like death metal's intellectual big brother (part of my high school bringing up). seriously, we listened to john zorn naked city and then when and saw palatka and it was like, "what the fuck?!?" same shit but without the batman surf themes and the noir.

my point? fuck... i guess i was trying to remember something about rhythm and class...
m.

ps lungfish is folk music unafraid of the rock. they're doing a west coast tour... i cannot fucking wait. i have already waited like 9 years. damn!

Whereas Carducci plots something like Cream/Blue Cheer/Hendrix - Zep/Sabbath/Grand Funk/Deep Purple - Rocket From the Tombs/Black Flag/Flipper - Minutemen/Saint Vitus/Tar Babies (holy shit!! Tortoise connection!) So yeah, he hears the "swing" - the rhythmic looseness of bands like Sabbath and Zeppelin and Deep Purple - having much more carry-over into the Ameri-indie guitar rock of the 80's than it did into the contemporary bands that attained commercial success (who just aped the surface aggressiveness of the forbears).

So there is a total awareness of rhythm within these 80's indie bands, one that doesn't necessarily lend itself to dancing, inclusiveness, the "massive"; but one that is conscious of "chops", playing, what-have-you (which further puts the lie to the notion that these post-rock groups were the first to concern themselves w/ it)

my "rhythm" question above didn't have a value judgment attached to it

it's pretty clear stereolab do not "swing" in any visible way (neither did neu!) but that doesn't make them (or their rhythm) any less valuable

that might be one reason why i still like post-rock. oneida is way more exciting to me than amon tobin live... and i love both of those artists.... i have stuff by both of them.

the first time i saw tortoise live, their interplay was magical to me. the layers moving in and out. it was a game. must more entertaining than flash plugin.

you can make music with electronics and still have a kick ass live thing ... but the acrobaticness of a performance is what makes a performance transcend a cd listening party.

m.

http://www.dischord.com has the dates...

i'm just glad to be able to catch them for once. living in hinterlands and moving too much screwed me...
m.

The rhythmic question is funny because there was some discussion on another thread about indie rhythm sections, and the examples that got cited positively were Tortoise, Fugazi and Stereolab. Which pretty much answers both this question and the earlier question about indie/race issues.

None of which means it is or isn't "good" or "great," I guess, since there's plenty of great music that is a lot more inaccessible than post-rock. But I am kind of bugged by the sense of disengagement with the broader world. Speaking socio-politically, it seems to me that the successful co-option of working-class (or whatever term you prefer) Americans by cultural conservatives in this country is abetted (or at least not contested) by cultural liberals spending too much time in their basements making tapes for each other and not enough time playing "Louie Louie" down at the corner bar. That doesn't mean post-rock is part of the problem, exactly, but it probably means it's not part of the solution.

No sir. The audience is what does that. I remember seeing Dr. Alex Patterson DJ once in a club as an opening act for another band. The audience, trained to standing and watching, and expecting to do so later for the next band anyway, hilariously stood and *watched* the man DJ for 45 minutes. As if they were there to see his combover.

And that differs from everything else we talk about here how?

You had me, and then you lost me. I'm all for a critique of liberals being innefectual, but what does "Louie Louie" have to do with it?

Also, given that there is a stereotype of indie/punk DIY values as a reaction against a middle class upbringing, what does that say about post-rock as a reaction to indie? Actually I don't know if that matters at all, but there definitely is a complex relationship between standard indie derision toward chops and attitudes toward class.

What do you mean by "everything else"? Madonna? The White Stripes? Justin Timberlake? Post-rock is a much more specialized and obscurantist form than a lot of other things that get batted around. (Sure, laptop electronica is in that ballpark too.) Deliberately specialized and obscrantist artforms raise class and privilege issues. It's art for the initiated.

Part of me is tempted to take issue with this re: later Stereolab. (I.e., I think it's only true if you consider pop groove and danceable lounge swing too old and standard to still count -- you can dance plenty to "Metronomic Underground" and swing plenty to "Ping Pong.")

Jordan: could the different reactions against middle-class values be as simple as DIY taking less showers than its parents and post-rock reading more books? That's a terrible metaphor, but hopefully you see what I mean.

I was just about to dis whoever cited Stereolab in this example as not having heard too much music, but nabisco just defended them and to be fair I haven't really heard the later material.

Jordan makes an interesting point about chops (gawd I hate typing that word), but again I think it has always been present in indie music. Maybe the natural inclination is to assume that anyone with a high degree of skill would apply it to a professional endeavor, but I mean was there a better guitar player in the 80's than Ginn (besides Van Halen)? A better bassist than Watt?

I think I picked at the wrong sentence, actually. What bugged me was this:

I think it's funny how people on here tend to talk about these things as if they're as visible -- and audible -- in the culture at large as they are to people here.

No we don't. I think it's pretty acknowledged that this is all an academic exercise, and using the argument that we don't understand the "masses" is silly.

Music isn't simplistically classist, but it is classist. The demographics of the radio dial are crude, but they're real. And I don't think there's anything inherently objectionable about "elitist" subgenres; they're part of a well-balanced diet, etc. At the same time, I can't help be bothered by cultural liberal subspecialization when I think we could use some more great cultural liberal generalists. That's all.

= Lou Reed as AM talk show host.

We don't need a liberal generalist. We have one, and his name is Michael Moore, and he's fast on his way to becoming the Limbaugh for the left. Fuck generalists.

Bwahahahaha!

I think that can be summed up pretty easily: they're listening to Burt Bacharach now instead of Neu. Wake me up when they have an original idea...

I noticed that the Italian site mentions a lot of bands whose members were in other bands in the 80s, such as Scenic (Savage Republic).

I like it quite a bit, not as much as the first three. I think they need to get back to messing up the sounds more after they are recorded again.

"you had groups like to rococo rot and four tet and fridge doing very wild stuff playing to both audiences... it's all three clicks and a sampler away...."

Three words = Mouse On Mars, thinking about things, they perhaps stradle that chasm perhaps best of all.

All the awful uses of breaks and faux jungle in bad commercial music could be just as much reason that some of these artists tend to shy away from the "funk". Of the groups mentioned, there are plenty that have used fragments from hiphop, jungle, breaks, etc.; it just is not their main sound.

The one band that got labeled 'post rock' that seemed to attempt to be funky, I didn't like, 5ive Style. I thought their music was pretty boring, funk rhythms or not.

Part of it is that my understanding of 'post-rock' as generic term wasn't becoming jazz (or whatever) as it was a principle I really liked -- namely, that one uses 'rock' instruments to do something that isn't rock. In the cold light of day that was a red herring because plenty of people had done that already over the moons from the sixties on and probably earlier if I really looked into it. But in the context of the early nineties, as applied to bands like (as Jess wisely noted) the seemingly-out-of-nowhere collages of Disco Inferno and almost as importantly the mutations of Main -- Robert Hampson's change from apocalyptic drone/psych rock to rhythm-obsessed-without-drums feedback-chop-up total freak-cake has always been much more interesting than whatever the hell Tor-Twah's evolution was in my ears -- were distinct revelations. Sterling's call on how something like Mogwai works for him than the rest of the 'genre,' whatever it is, resonates with me perfectly, and I also think that IDM, while itself a limiting term, has produced more music to love than the Thrill Jockey axis and associated minions.

But I will spare you the full Tortoise/Sea and Cake rant to only briefly note:

Radiohead's progression is like post-rock in a nutshell, only after post-rock had already happened and thus slightly less impressive.

It's not timing but impact that matters, and though there's nothing to connect the songs at all, I will take three minutes of "Idioteque" over all twenty minutes of "Djed" any day of the week.

hey john: can you plz come back and explain some of yr commnets on thsi thread. from the above it looks like you were gonna start some sort of marxist ananlysis on post-rock (can you tell me and others abt the economics of recording post-rock bcz I'm unclear).

I think you have misread the tone of hstencil's comments and I really hope you can come back. Even if you think you haven't I'd like to read more.

ned- this isn't really abt whether the rec were any good or not surely.

I think what nabisco said abt post-rock in terms of 'trends' is OTM and diamond's posts are pretty grebt too. its a nice read overall.

I think it's about both depending on whose take it is. Quite obviously for a lot of people here this is a combination of reflecting on (for lack of a better term) 'growing up,' finding out more about the music around you, and that is interesting in and of itself because we all do that, or so we hope. So that's why the thread is interesting to me even though I wasn't in Chicago in ground-zeroville or the like. But as it stands, I still think nothing of the music -- I'm not questioning Nabisco et al's fine reflections on the history of what impact Tortoise had, but I am bitterly disappointed in the vehicle and think the group's influence might have led to more explorations for some but resulted in a fairly dull and uninvolving genre-in-spite-of-itself in the end. Mogwai may be all about 'dumb rock songs' if one insists, but if the alternate is bloodless intelligence that gives no thrill, I will take the thrill.

but this has been explored elsewhere no?

I'm interested in the ideas abt class and how it all links to post-rock (as some ppl are hinting). I want ppl to make connections (john was hinting at some, he seeemed to phrase it as an economic issue and I'm interested) and a debate around those.

Disposable time is a very precious commodity; perhaps the most precious.

I think it's non-controversial to say that the idea of "influence" has a lot to do with the answer to this question. When folks (and now I'm talking about the musicians) find themselves wanting to incorporate influences that come from some cultural place that is an "other" to them, there's a tendency to get self-conscious about it--that's where the issues of "authenticity" and "appropriation" come up, and they certainly get a lot of people hung up. Now musicians have been dealing with this situation for a long time, and there have been many ways that these influences have been incorporated. I think Jess's original question on this thread is why the "post-rock" crowd, at their particular moment in time, were so serious and self-conscious about incorporating their diverse influences, as opposed to say, the mythic '79-'82 era when similar kinds of diverse influences seemed (in retrospect?) to have been incorporated with a lot more fun and vitality rather than timidity and "proper repsect" or something. I'd aruge that many post-rockers' (ugh) historian-type tendencies made them over-consious of their own class/race in relation to that of much of their influences, and this hyper-consciousness made for much soft-treading, boring "art" as a result.

Are post-rockers just receiving the same derision that post-punkers received? What affinities lie between the 1990s post-rock stuff and the late 1970s-early 1980s post-punk stuff, esp. Rough Trade-style bands?

"Did post-rock 'kill' indie?" sounds like a variation on "Is rock dead?"

This is why I want to concentrate on talking about fans and trends more than our critical opinions. The rise of Chicago post-rock was, so far as I can tell, the peak of influence of the attitudes that came with the mid-90s British "post-rock" more of us like: D.I., Main, all of that Too Pure stuff. I think it's fine as a critical opinion to say that the way some of the Chicago bands followed up on that stuff wasn't quite as interesting as the way it started, and that's an opinion I'd be likely to agree with -- but in trend of terms the fact remains that for loads of people the post-rock revelation was only just bubbling up with Seefeel and Bark Psychosis but really stepped up with Millions Now Living Will Never Die. (The bulk response, around here at least, would have been something like: Seefeel = "hmm, interesting," Bark Psychosis = "we really like this stuff," MNLWND = "we are climbing on-board!") There's a distinct line there, and it's even come full-circle: listen to current-day Chicago semi-post-rockers Zelienople, and you'll hear something that sounds about like Hex.

Anyway. I'm probably fonder of the Too Pure axis than the Chicago one, though I have loads more of the Chicago records just as a function of being here. And while Tortoise can indeed be sort of boring, I'm nevertheless completely baffled by the "Tortoise are boring" charges, because they seem completely point-missing to me. Just because Tortoise leaned on jazz doesn't mean they were trying in any sense to be exciting; just cause they had grooves doesn't mean they were meant to move. Make no mistake: for a great bulk of their listeners, Tortoise was lying-in-bed-stoned headspace music, and I'm really not sure how their approach to that was all that much more "boring" than that of their predecessors.

By the way, one thing no one's really spent much time on w/r/t to the Chicago stuff is the injection of something much like folk into the project. ("I blame O'Rourke!")

Some days it freaking feels like it! And if I have to read one more press release from a band approvingly saying both 'post-rock influences' and 'Tortoise' in it again, I will hunt and slay. Just as in a lot of discourse Led Zeppelin seems to be/is THEE heavy metal band in a wide context and Parliament/Funkadelic is THEE funk act and etc. etc. (and of course in all these examples there are plenty of counterexamples people prefer, etc.)

listen to current-day Chicago semi-post-rockers Zelienople, and you'll hear something that sounds about like Hex.

Hm, now I'm intrigued...

Just because Tortoise leaned on jazz doesn't mean they were trying in any sense to be exciting

This sorta hurts my head. I mean, I see what you're saying, but it almost (almost) sounds like 'We're doing this! And we're not out to catch your attention in any way.' Ok, thanks...

The exotica comparison IS interesting. But in Denny's case, I think the sum was greater than the whole of the parts, whereas in Tortoise's, I think it was much, much less.

Nabisco, why after this:

Tortoise =/= all post-rock ever!

...then two and a half more posts on em?!

And here's more, to explain to Ned: I'm not trying to say they were just not trying and should therefore be forgiven! I think what I mean is that some people seem to get told that there's a supposed "groove" in there, so they listen to Tortoise records and find, well, no actual body-affecting groove or anything, and so they pack up their bags and go the fuck home -- "that was boring!" I just don't think that's what Tortoise were offering in the first place, so it's unhelpful to look for it and not find it there. Seriously, my Martin Denny comparison isn't meant as an "interesting perspective" -- it's the majority of how I and everyone I knew enjoyed Tortoise, especially on TNT.

Tortoise records on the other hand were readily available, not as some kind of new sound, more or less another indie rock band release with members from "x". Tortoise played a show in Muncie, Indiana for cripes sake, NO one ever plays Muncie. (Then again, Cluster played in Anderson, Indiana for some weird reason, so maybe it was some flux.)

"Make no mistake: for a great bulk of their listeners, Tortoise was lying-in-bed-stoned headspace music..."

Yeah, that is true, but you can say that about alot of music.

I checked out some Martin Denny, Esquivel, Steve Reich & Morricone after getting into Tortoise & Labradford, etc. Denny & Esquivel had some neat sounds, but it didn't catch me at all, it was too much lounge, which I guess was the point. I can understand why some people like their music. Morricone's spaghetti western music and some of the later symphonic soundtracks are great. I've never heard some of those obscure soundtracks with jazz group. The Steve Reich I have heard is quite interesting and good.

So are you arguing from a Satie-into-Eno 'this is music to be ignored' approach or from a 'concentrate on the mystic tones to find its heart' way? It seems like the latter, but the one or two times I tried to do that it just left me bored (that word again!) and annoyed. As background spacey tinkles, I'd probably just rather put on something else I liked.

Now if you're going to mention Labradford, Earl, THERE'S a band I can be captivated by several different ways to Sunday.

Growing up, I did see Dag Nasty and Rollins doing his speaking thing in Muncie early on. Big Black & Rapeman played there also, but I wasn't that hip in the know, to check them out until after that happened.

Cluster live in Anderson, thinking about it now seems as weird a booking as they come.

Problem is, they've worked with so many other bands that it does sometimes seem like this is the case.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/t/tortoise/tnt.shtml

(This is a terrible review, btw, but the sentiment is right.)

(..unless this thread was just an excuse to be a thorn on the side of Thrill Jockey and the Wire.. cuz I disagree that 'indie' has been permanently affected by them)

This might be more relevant for the other thread, but I think this might actually be one of those areas where focusing too much on a rigid genre definition is slightly misleading. When I say I like post-rock, I mean partly that I like post-rock and partly that I liked the general post-rock moment and era and trend, which had to do with way more than just post-rock: it had, from where I was standing, to do with a conventionally rocky scene suddenly opening up and folding in a bunch of interesting directions, precedented or not; it had to do with an indie scene that was suffering mightily under alt-rock gradually getting excited about electronics, ambience, dub, jazz, orchestral pop, folk, bossa nova, ye-ye, soundtracks, exotica, and loads of other things. Surely that was a good thing? I was a lot happier hearing people talk about their exciting "discovery" of Wagon Christ via the Tortoise remixes than I was hearing rockers defend Billy Corgan and gripe about whether or not the Smoking Popes were sell-outs.

I'm all for it. And then teen-pop returned in force and hip-hop ruled the roost and people cried and went, "I learned about all this other stuff and I don't want to learn about this!" (I am exaggerating.)

Ew. Don't link me to that! That's horribly written! Why don't you just link me to pictures of shit-eating or something!

(rejoining thread 14 hours later...)

Sure it does. Liberalism as a conceptual framework is a generalization. I could even concoct some kind of argument about how generalization is fundamentally liberal and specialization is fundamentally conservative, but I won't reach that far. How all that relates to class issues takes some dot-connecting, but I think it's pertinent to the alleged subject at hand. Post-rock didn't "kill" indie or anything else, and it made some nice music and arose from/created what from all accounts was an energetic, creative scene (or scenes), and that's all to the good as far as it goes (or went, depending on which tense you want to use). I'm just saying that it didn't go all that far, in a socio-cultural sense, and more to the point, it was sort of designed to not go all that far. However much fun it was on the inside, it was pretty hermetic. Now, you can blame the rest of the culture for not lining up at the door to get in, just as you can blame it for not buying enough free jazz or Tom Ze albums. You can also say you just don't give a fuck how accessible or inaccessible, elitist or populist, any particular band or subgenre is and you only care how good it sounds to you. Which is fine, too -- as far as it goes.

"using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords."

I know he was describing Bark Psychosis/Pram/Seefeel/Disco Inferno et al, but it's a blindingly vague catch-all for any textural use of a 'rock' instrument that goes back to, well, by it's own definition the start of rock & roll music.

Bollocks from the start, basically. No wonder it's such a disliked and shamed term.

wow they really left you hanging, marc h.

I guess “indie” is alive and well, huh

although now pop and electronic have the DIY cred John was going on about. indie needs, like, a studio.

“Post rock” music like that if explosions in the sky just makes me think of fundamental Christianity and children’s hospitals

of

Fundamentalist

isn't part of what separates indie rock from alt/radio rock a certain "intelligence" ("intelligent rock music"! oh god) or, in darker form, "smartypants-ness

Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
True he likes the Breeders
He thinks Green Day's pretty swell
But what about the Bartlebees and Neutral Milk Hotel?
It's okay for a sunny day but that Sting album won't do
So when I play you Allen Clapp, you'll know baby I love you!
Hey hey
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Sure he buys you records
If you like them by U2
But if you want the Pastels
Baby, here's what you should do
Get on your bike and take a hike
And meet me at our spot
Just you and me and Halo Benders
Hey that's pretty hot
And we'll sing ...
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Break it down, go!
Here's a way to spend our day
With Lois and the Crabs
We'll have some fun and visit Cub
And maybe we'll hold hands
We can keep the Lemonheads
And Weezer he gave you
Cause you and me got Heavenly and Nothing Painted Blue
Hey hey
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
3-2-1
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Hey hey
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about

For me the fact remains however that once the stench of conoisseur-ism has wafted into a room (the room in question here being "indie"), that room hasn't got long before it stinks to high heaven.

One more time
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Hey hey
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Hey hey
Pop songs your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about
Go!

remember that the era Jess is recalling was pre-home-Pro-Tools an' shit - and you can't go recording the post-rock on a boombox. or even a four-track. no no no. it must be all-analog recording into ribbon mics in a big room with low humidity so the drums don't blah blah blah, etc etc martini-sippin' etc ... please do point me in the direction of some lo-fi post-rock played on shitty instruments though, it'd be a subgenre that managed to completely elude me

Were Dymaxion "post-rock"? I'm pretty sure all their music was recorded or assembled in SoundEdit 16 or less.

indie rock loudly insists that you don't need anything besides a good idea to make a great record; post-rock of necessity MUST HAVE MONEY

I think Mogwai took this a major step further. Part of the appeal of Young Team to a 13 year old wannabe like myself was in demonstrating that you don't even need an idea to make an exciting album, you can pull it off with just enthusiasm and maybe a couple of fx pedals.