Jaw Bone, 2017
Unlike many of the artists interviewed in Leech’s book on “post rock”, I actually dig the maligned non-genre for its “open-ended but precise” implications. Inspired by Derrida’s ideas of deconstruction, music critic Simon Reynolds came up with the umbrella as a way of connecting independent bands that were doing their part in melting down the rigid, commercialized machine that rock music became, and re-assembling the old signifiers with far-reaching influences (dub, techno, chamber music, improvisation, etc), new technologies (samplers, computers), and inverted musical hierarchies. One of the reason for this eventual maligning is that, by the 2000s, post-rock got pigeonholed as this kind of “crescendo-core” that third-wave groups like Explosions in the Sky and a stream of others were known for. Ironically Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai and Sigur Ros (bands often thought of as quintessential post-rock) actually were not post-rock according to Reynolds and the bands themselves, but rather dramatic, (mostly) instrumental rock, without much deconstructive sensibility at all. Even though Leech does discuss these bands in the last few chapters, she does a great job at exploring the diversity of sounds, philosophies, and methodologies that post-rock is capable of encapsulating.
Fearless: The Making of Post-Rock functions as a jagged oral history, utilizing over forty fresh interviews, as well as deep research into books, blogs, documentaries, and magazines (especially The Wire). Because of its rootlessness, post rock has a difficult lineage to trace, yet Leech draws a convincing narrative through the decades leading up to the post rock blossoming of the 90s. Perhaps surprisingly at first, she starts off in her “Proto-” chapter with Ornette Coleman, whose radical deconstruction of traditional jazz structures demonstrates a strong parallel between the way free jazz and post rock artists strove to create their own languages. The story soon veers through 60s art rock (Velvet Underground, AMM, Red Crayola), Krautrock, Dub Reggae, American Primitivism, Ambient, and punk, also a reaction to the excesses of stadium rock (until its formula almost immediately got co-opted by the corporate machine). In a sense post-rock is kind of an introverted extension of post-punk and No Wave, a way of applying a DIY punk ethos and a raw, elemental approach to more experimental, atmospheric and un-formulaic ends. In the 80s, Leech explores the way early dream pop bands like A.R. Kane and Cocteau Twins directly influenced post rock with their intangible, textural, obscured and somewhat messy music.
Once we get to the original post rock albums (Spirit of Eden and Spiderland) and the depressed, disconnected, accelerated era of the 90s, the chapters begin to hop back and forth between the post-rock scenes in the UK (Bristol, London, Glasgow) and the American midwest (Louisville, Chicago), with a beautiful detour into Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood to dive into the heavily principled, leftist and creative music on Constellation Records. Leech richly investigates these bands’ histories, philosophies, and methods a way that highlights their connections while celebrating their uniqueness. The only group I’m bummed Leech neglected to mention is Tarentel, a definitive post rock group in my opinion, whose discography chronologically embodied the decay and mossification of the rusted rock machine. It’s hard to complain about a text covering such a wide breadth of artists, allowing me to peer deeper into some of my favorites, while leaving me with dozens of new discoveries left to explore.
Instead of trying to paraphrase the rest of the story and spoil Leech’s well-written and engaging book, I will suffice to just highlight a collection of inspiring quotes:
“The best thing about the so-called post-rock thing was that it had this brief moment where the concept of it was to make music that came from the indie scene but had no limitations. Any instrumentation would go, any song lengths, any format” – Kieran Hebden (Fridge/Four Tet) (274)
“[The] conscious project to dissolve the guitar suggested that post-rock really had fulfilled a sort of evolutionary destiny; that it wasn’t a genre tag with a definable sound but away to hasten rock’s extinction” (268)
“Take as little as possible from many different areas. Tiny fragments–whether from different styles of music or, increasingly, from unique performances and ambient sounds–would be stitched together in such a meticulous way as ti be a perfect encapsulation of feeling” (91)
“We only stand out because that conventional form has become so narrow, so constricted”
“The first time that something is played, it is at its finest. […] So much of what we do is built around mistakes” – Mark Hollis (93,97)
“We wanted to create our own culture because we didn’t feel connected to anything […] networks being created completely outside of the mainstream music business, for reasons that had little or nothing to do with economic incentive” – Ian MacKaye (104)
“Musicians did not ride to success on the back of post-rock, it seemed. Post-Rock rode to success on the back of them” (186)
“I worked at [making Tilt], and [the listener] should work at it as well” – Scott Walker (101)
“Scott Walker believes, and I take issue with him on this, that in order to convey a very strong emotion in the music, you have to be feeling it while you’re making it” – Brian Gascoigne (Walker’s arranger/conductor) (100)
“The more you learn to play, the more you learn to lie, whereas if you cannot play, you cannot lie” – Holger Czukay (Can) (18)
“There was no earthly reason, no logical reason, no pragmatic reason, no functional reason, to function the way tat most bands functioned. Because that just seemed like a dead end, a loser’s game” – Efrim Menuck (303)
“The strident democracy of band structure seen in hardcore was only a small step removed from the explicit undoing of hierarchy that was a common feature of post-rock. The second was a proud localism, which often extended to commandeering vacant or underused spaces for rehearsals, gigs, and gatherings. […] it was easy to make a virtue out of a necessity when reclaiming urban space” (104)
“This music was ‘vertical’. In a philosophical sense, it rejected expected structure (although it could still be highly structured), and did not move laterally from stage to stage. In this, it resembled the ideology of Ornette Coleman, because the music made sense according to its own terms, and there was no real way of knowing what was coming. It was interested in the margins of thoughts, creating meaning by stacking up spaces between gestures and overlapping perspectives on a moment in time, rather than having a story or static focus” (208)
“You’d see Tortoise, and they’d play this kind of music, and everything was included. It was a bit like the world of hip-hop where everything’s included; if they can use it, it doesn’t matter what the music is” – Tim Gane (Stereolab) (208)
“The problem I always had with [the term] is it basically had to reduce rock music to clichés in order for it to even have any platform to stand on” – Jeff Parker (213)
“Lyrically, I was interested in using words to say the nothing, a sort of post-disinterestedness. Not to tell or command with strategies, but to express the void-emptiness-nothingness-meaninglessness-aimlessness” – Gary McKendry (Papa Sprain) (180)
“It’s this sheer belief that what you were doing was the right thing, and it was just being on a burning fucking mission” – Graham Sutton (120)
“The source of all our music is that we’ve refused to accept adulthood” – Marcus Eoin (Boards of Canada) (326)
“It’s a desire for emotional connection in the face of impossibility. Like there’s a chasm between you and what you want to be close to.” – Stephen Immerwahr (Codeine) (200)
![Slint – Spiderland [Remastered]](https://i0.wp.com/nofoodjustwax.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_8438-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C1200&ssl=1)
