The Post-Rock Post, or, Hipster Hippie Circlejerk Celebration 2010

My band of choice is super vague, you've probably never heard of them :smug:

At some point in high school I was introduced to a little band called Godspeed You Black Emperor. I couldn't really get into them as much as I wanted to. I felt like it was the type of music I should be listening to, but it could just be so dark. Then, as a young and impressionable college freshman, a friend in my dorm introduced me to a band called Sigur Rós. This was what I wanted. Their songs were long and epic like Godspeed, but they differed in a major way -- they were happy.

With the exception of most of the pretentious pricks who make up the fanbase of this genre, nobody likes the term "Post-Rock." But it's stuck, so there's nothing anyone can really do about it. There's nothing special about this music. It's just music without lyrics. That's all. And I like it that way. To me, lyrics often seem to do nothing but get in the way. All too easily, you can get lost in trying to interpret what this or what that is supposed to mean, and then you just outright stop listening for the sake of music; you're simply listening to mediocre poetry.

Post-rock is probably the most beautiful form of music I've ever listened to. As I clumsily picked away at my guitar all those years ago, this is the type of music I fantasized about eventually playing. If it could be summed up in one word, it would be minimalism. And I propose the genre's name be switched to that. Minimalism strips away all the fanfare around rock, and focuses solely on the bare bones of music. As Ian MacDonald said, minimalism is the "passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of the Machine Age, its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in the face of mass-production and The Bomb." But that's not necessarily accurate, because not every band listed below is passionless or emotionally blank. It's just one of those things that can't be easily defined, and I feel like such a god damn hipster for saying that I am so sorry okay. Wikipedia:

As a musical genre, post-rock is arguably too vague to be useful. Don Caballero and Tortoise were among the more prominent bands described as post-rock in the 1990s, but their styles are very different, despite being instrumental bands centered on guitars and drums. As such, the term has been the subject of backlash from listeners and artists alike.

[...]

The post-rock sound incorporates characteristics from a variety of musical genres, including ambient, jazz, electronica, and experimental. The traditional method of power chords is replaced with timbre and texture for guitar-play while the song and voice is abandoned by its ambience. The rebellious overtones of rock as we remember it is no longer the theme for post-rock groups. In fact, utilizing dub reggae, hip hop, and rave, post-rock manages to create an androgynous and softer means of subversion. The clubs were also a response to the emergence of a new post-rock vibe where musicians escaped musical genre labels and traded ideas. Early post-rock groups also often exhibited strong influence from the krautrock of the '70s, particularly borrowing elements of "motorik", the characteristic krautrock rhythm.

Post-rock compositions often make 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. Typically, post-rock pieces are lengthy and instrumental, containing repetitive build-ups of timbre, dynamics and texture.

Vocals are often omitted from post-rock; however, this does not necessarily mean they are absent entirely. When vocals are included, the use is typically non-traditional: some post-rock bands employ vocals as purely instrumental efforts and incidental to the sound, rather than a more traditional use where "clean", easily-interpretable vocals are important for poetic and lyrical meaning. When present, post-rock vocals are often soft or droning and are typically infrequent or present in irregular intervals. Sigur Rós, a band known for their distinctive vocals, fabricated a language that critics call "Hopelandic" (Vonlenska in icelandic, a term even used by the band), which has been described by the band as "a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument."

This is my favorite genre of all music, ever. Before I knew about my ADD and I got on Adderall, listening to these bands was the only possible way to get my brain to just shut the fuck up for a second so I could actually focus on something long enough to get it done. I'm not exaggerating when I say I probably would've been forced to drop out of college without them. This music really does mean a lot to me, and so I would like to share. Here's a very small selection of my favorite post-rock songs. If they manage to bring somebody only half of the happiness which they have brought me, I'll be satisfied.

Godspeed You Black Emperor



I think my brother Chris first told me about Godspeed. This was right around the time I was first introduced to Dredg and The Mars Volta as well. In high school, I was way too obsessed with classic rock bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. While all of these artists are extremely good, I've come to realize that this obsession was more of a way of rebelling against the bands most other people liked. Emo, pop-punk, and "alternative" were the big things back then, and they all fucking sucked. I just couldn't believe people enjoyed that shit. I still can't. Finding out that good music had been made after 1979 was one of the greatest discoveries of my entire life.

Oh, and it's basically an unspoken rule that when describing any post rock band, you must compare them to Godspeed. Everyone knows about Godspeed.



Sigur Rós



As I said, a friend introduced to me to these guys soon after I entered college. I was blown away, and to this day "( )" is still one of my favorite albums of all time.



The Album Leaf



After my uncontrollable orgasm ceased, I went to this friend again and let him know how much I fucking loved these guys. In addition to burning me another Sigur Rós CD, he then told me about The Album Leaf. I didn't even know this type of music existed. There was more of it!!



Explosions In The Sky



And for a while, I just stuck with the above three. It took a long time for me to go actively searching for more stuff like this, and once I finally did, I wanted to fucking kick myself for not doing it sooner. Explosions in the Sky has become my favorite "post-rock" band. I'm not even sure if it's fair to categorize them as post-rock to begin with, because they seem to do away completely with the minimalist style typical of the genre. They use elements more common in conventional rock, and in doing so their style seems much more emotional. I want to say they might be my favorite band of all bands ever, but I just said Murder By Death was exactly that in my last music post, so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that yet.



These are the four bands most people are familiar with if they know of the genre. The lesser known shit is just as good.

Johnnytwentythree



JXXIII takes the crescendocore of Godspeed, and adds their own touch. Their mood never gets to the "slit my wrist" point like Godspeed. It's still a bit dark, but with much more of a relaxing or hopeful atmosphere to it.



The Ascent of Everest

The Ascent of Everest is relatively new, and they need to be more known, so spread them the fuck around. They take the epic post-rock crescendo to a whole new level, in that the notes played within the crescendo are actually pleasing to listen to.





This Will Destroy You



Reminiscent of Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You makes much more use of conventional rock instruments instead of overdoing classical string instruments. This is something that needs to be done more. I love violins and cellos as much as the next guy, but the guitar may be the most versatile instrument ever invented, and there is nothing wrong with it.



Mogwai



Mogwai formed in 1995, and they're one of the most important bands of the genre. Most of the above bands will list them as one of their influences.

Sunday Youtube Post

My roommate freshman year had MTV on all the time. I can't believe how accurate this is.

Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico nonstop for about a month and a half. BP has somehow taken control of the beaches away from the Coast Guard, preventing photographers from documenting the worst coastal spill in the history of the country. Additionally, they now own the airspace above, so planes can't fly in for a look either. As much as 39 million gallons of oil have contaminated the ecosystem. Eleven people are dead. Those people had families.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Click on the images for larger resolutions.

Friday Youtube Post

Skippy decided to put me on rifle and shotgun this summer instead of archery, so coworker buddy Amanda and I will be carpooling to Missouri tomorrow to some scout camp so we can be trained for our respective jobs (she's waterfront director). I'll be gone for a week, so I'll do this today.

The artist is Jamie Hewlett, he draws the Gorillaz.

Anime Part 2

I haven't really started anything else from the last post yet. But thanks to the Recommending Anime Thread on Something Awful, I've found things that look shit loads better, and I think they all deserve a new post. I'm going through the original 1979 Gundam series right now, and while the animation and sound quality is complete shit and the characters seem to be cardboard cutouts at the point I'm at (still at the beginning), it still looks like has a lot of potential. I've never paid attention to any Gundam series before, and the action sequences are surprisingly technical. They don't treat the viewers like a bunch of idiots like other shows I've seen. I mean they put in lagrangian points, reentry blackouts, etc. Real shit. It's incredibly awesome, and I'm not surprised in any way that the series bored the hell out of me when I was 12.



I really want space operas. There's probably over a dozen different Gundam series, but there are other things I've discovered that look really fucking amazing too.

Macross

I'm still confused as to where I'm supposed to start on this series. There's like seven movies, and then one show that's sort of part of the series, but not really? All I know is that I want to watch it very badly. The people on Something Awful who recommended this agreed that it's one of the best animes ever made, and I've never heard of it before. Some sort of alien technology was recovered from a crash, and humans were able to reverse engineer it for their own use of blowing the fuck out of things. This video is going to be boring at first, but wait for the action scenes. Holy balls.



Legend of Galactic Heroes

This series sound like it's exactly what I'm looking for. As one goon put it, "the ship battles aren't dynamic space dogfights like Macross or Gundam, or even like Star Trek - they're more naval-esque with formations of ships lining up and firing barrages at each other while their commanders shout orders."



Planetes

Planetes takes place in the year 2076. It's not about epic space battles. It's about a small team collecting space debris orbiting earth. It's apparently really good at keeping things realistic. The youtube comments say this is a terrible trailer and that it doesn't do the show justice.



Zeta Gundam

I'm really excited for this. It takes place a few years after the original series, and many of the characters are still around. With the war over, the Earth Federation is taking more steps to stamp out any opposition. When rights start being taken away, a new rebellion arises.



I feel like such a nerd for spending so much time researching this stuff. Now I'm able to better understand why the lives of anime nerds are completely consumed by this shit. I don't know how the hell I'm going to watch all of this.

By now most should've heard about the attempt by Texas schoolboards to completely make up history. They're altering textbooks in their schools, omitting important facts, and in some cases printing outright lies. For example, the slave trade is no longer called the slave trade. It's called the "Atlantic triangular trade." Secularist Thomas Jefferson is largely taken out, and more emphasis is put on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery traitors. Regardless of the fact that America was not founded on God, their books will now say that America was founded on God.

"There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

This is a big deal because the state of Texas is the largest purchaser of textbooks in the country, and textbook companies often cater to them. So that means other states may be getting the same material.

Texans For Truthful Textbooks held a rally yesterday. Atheist, historian, writer, and professional badass Christopher Hitchens was not present at the rally, but he did send in a speech to be read.

We know of no spectacle more ridiculous — or more contemptible — than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth.

Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights — the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

We make no saint of Thomas Jefferson — we leave the mindless business of canonization and the worship of humans to the fanatics — but aware as we are of his many crimes and contradictions we say with confidence that his memory and example will endure long after the moral pygmies who try to blot out his name have been forgotten.

As Abraham Lincoln died, after a cowardly shot in the back from a racist traitor, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sighed and said: “Now he belongs to the ages”. Or did he say “Now he belongs to the angels”? In a roomful of highly literate and educated officers and physicians, in an age of photography and stenography, and with newspaper presses around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue, there was no agreement among eye-and-ear witnesses as to what Stanton had actually said.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. They try to tell us that to do otherwise is to collapse into “relativism”. But it is they who wish to promote the life and work of Jefferson Davis — an advocate of slavery, backwardness, treason and disunion — to an equality with Lincoln, who suffered agonies of doubt, who never joined a church, who was born on the same day as Charles Darwin and who introduced his colleagues to the work of Thomas Paine — and who was the last brave casualty of a war: a war begun by devout and fanatical Christians, that preserved our Union and in the end led to the striking of the shackles from every slave. It was inscribed in the documents of the Confederacy that the private ownership of human beings had a divine warrant. And so it did — to the everlasting shame of those who take the Bible as god’s word.

It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until “Juneteenth”. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state — a state that had its own courageous revolution — from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today that they will join their fore-runners in the flat earth community, and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks — as a joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair, and take care to ensure that their tale is told.

As President, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from a concerned group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. These people were the objects of persecution and the victims of discrimination, and they beseeched Jefferson to uphold their liberties. Of whom were they afraid? It should be remembered, and taught in our schools, that these poor Baptists were afraid of the Congregationalists of Connecticut, who subjected their fellow-Christians to insult and insecurity. Thus it was the secular and unbelieving Jefferson who insisted that, by means of a “wall of separation” between religion and government, all faiths and communities could take shelter under the great roof of the godless Constitution. From that day to this, the only guarantee of religious pluralism has been the secular law.

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: “Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL”.

Glenn Beck literally claims to be a prophet reciting what God is telling him

This is why he's telling everyone to leave their churches. He's starting his own cult!

Some guy named Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast called Common Sense. He's extremely intelligent, and the show continuously forces you to question your own beliefs, which is something every person should always be doing. He's fiscally conservative but socially liberal, and he's bound to piss you off no matter what side of the aisle you're on.

Sometimes he puts forward little thought experiments. A few weeks ago he brought up the question of whether it's even worth it to pay attention to politics anymore. Even if you do pay attention, and go so far as to vote, things never change at all. And those who don't follow anything are spared from the national pissing contest and don't suffer the constant stress brought on by worrying about everything.



All I want to say is that this idea sounds more and more appealing to me every time Glenn Beck opens his fucking trap. Why does he have any audience at all? It's just so depressing. I don't want to believe that people can really be this god damn stupid, and in such great numbers. Everything is explained in the video.

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Sunday Youtube Post

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