randomWalks

I'm digging it. Is this post-rock?

No, man, it's pre-, uh, something.



I haven't even really listened to it. But I'd be surprised if it were post-rock. The Lips have always been pretty solidly rock. Just rock. Well, maybe psychedelic rock.

Post-rock is more bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor, Tortoise, American Analog Set, and Tristeza. Not that you needed/wanted to know that.

But I'll be pedantic about it anyway.

What's radiohead?

Britpop slowly morphing into post-rock. The Bends? Total Britpop. Amnesiac? Kind of a blend. They're still too focused on vocals and melody to really be what I've seen referred to as post-rock yet (see Pyramid Song, Knives Out, You and Whose Army? on Amnesiac). Most of the post-rock stuff I've seen is more about sound texture and is generally pretty repetitive. Radiohead is heading more in that direction, but they still play rock songs.

Both Radiohead and post-rock draw on 20th-century "classical" music for inspiration, but they go to different sources: Radiohead looks to Messaien (about whom I admit I know nothing) and post-rock borrows from Reich, Glass and other minimalists.

Is it just me, or is this Lips album returning to the style of Clouds Taste Metallic and Transmissions from the Satellite Heart? I'm glad. Most critics seemed to go apeshit over The Soft Bulletin, but I've never really warmed up to it.

nedlog, I was just going to reference Reich, Riley and Cage. True--it draws on 20th century atonal composers. In a way, this makes it similar to 'progressive rock' from the seventies (ELP and the like), except progressive bands drew more from the Romantic side of things. I think post-rock draws some from seventies Krautrock bands like Can and Neu! as well, who in turn based a lot of their stuff on the Velvet Underground, who in turn based a lot of their stuff on 20th century atonal composers like LaMonte Young. So it goes full circle. And damn it if it doesn't always come back to the Velvet Underground.



Personally, I know nothing of the Flaming Lips other than that one song that shall remain nameless, and that critics went apeshit over the Soft Bulletin. And then there was that four-disc thingy.

I just saw the American Analog Set last night, so I've been doing some thinking about this anyway.

Yeah, the Krautrock influence is important.



The Flaming Lips are well worth getting into (which should already be evident from the other stuff I've said). Try Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, which features that nameless song.



also, post-rock.com.

the more i hear of this band the more I am itching to find concerts, even in far away places, for me to go to, in order to engage in sound experimentation.

nedlog, that link is mighty apprectiated, but someone needs to fix all the dead links over there. And I was frightened by how many of the bands on their list I've heard of/own albums by.

I hadn't used that site for several years. I like how it says to lose the singer or work with Jon McIntire. Working with McIntire is certainly key. Though these days Jim O'Rourke could probably be plugged in there too (but then that would make Wilco post-rock, which they definitely aren't... hmm).

I thought a couple tracks on YHF sounded a little post-rockish (first and last songs, mostly).



Who's Jon McIntire?

So would that make Gastr del Sol super-uber post-rock? Is Alan Moulder the John McIntire of shoegazer bands?

McIntire plays drums and does other stuff for Tortoise; plays drums for and produces The Sea and Cake; has played vibes and other stuff for and produced Stereolab; has played in Isotope 217 or whatever that band is; etc. Based in Chicago. Oh, and he's remixed Tom Ze (and Tortoise was Ze's backing band on tour). I've kind of lost track of him lately though.



Who's Alan Moulder?

One of the guys who worked on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album. He also worked on Siamese Dream, and some other stuff. Siamese Dream sonically has a lot in common with Loveless, so he ends up getting some of the credit for how Loveless (which took eons to record) sounds.



I looked up McIntire on AllMusic--he and Jim O'Rourke were both in Gastr, so it's a post-rock supergroup.

to be picky: reich, riley, cage, young, etc are all minimal composers. atonality is associated with the second viennese school and serialism (schoenberg, berg, webern, etc) and is taken to its logical extreme through the total serialism of pierre boulez or karlheinz stockhausen. minimalism is typically american while atonality is usually associated with the european avant garde.



you can certainly see a strong minimalist influence in many post-rock groups--one of the strongest examples that immediately comes to mind is the track "ten day interval" by tortoise--there's a huge reich influence there.



i know that jim o'rourke was trained in 12 tone composition (the system that serialism is entirely based in), though it doesn't seem to have influenced his gastr del sol or later output. there are some gastr del sol bits that remind me a lot of messaien though.



john mcentire played with gastr del sol, but to the extent of my knowledge, he was never a real member. gastr was jim o'rourke and david grubbs, though they played with a lot of other musicians.



anyway, this is what i get for searching for "jim o'rourke" and "messiaen" on google.

You're all idiots, in a very official way.