TS: Tortoise vs the Barron Knights

Both exponents of post-rock, but from different perspectives. Realising in 1994 that the old rockist tropes were no longer fresh or fruitful, Tortoise introduced new, quieter, subtler dynamic strategies into the basic rock group formula, systematically decentralising them with elements of found music and electronica, while crucially banishing the voice, as the only necessary voice was that to be heard in the listener's head.

Three decades earlier, however, the Barron Knights had already realised that the Merseybeat-initiated tropes were doomed to exhaustion. Thus they anticipated its inevitable dissolution by suggesting the eventual annihilation of pop groups in the bloody arenas of Vietnam ("Call Up The Groups") and more generally deconstructed well-known songs, lyrics and memes, rearranging the elements in a curiously Burroughsian fashion (note especially the desegregation of the secular/carnal divide which marked their Plunderphonics-anticipating reading of "Rivers Of Babylon" in 1978's punk-acknowledging "A Taste Of Aggro"). This approach they then coupled with wistful but wry reflections on a vanishing England whose hidden profundity almost approached Ray Davies' key works of the late '60s; and the dying embers of "Cilla Black's Hat" and "The Chapel Lead Is Missing" provide a direct harmonic link to Tortoise's rueful "Along The Banks Of Rivers."