GuideGlossary
Post Rock Bands: The Essential Names
Post rock bands use rock instruments for something other than rock songs: texture, atmosphere and long structures in place of verses, choruses and riffs. The term came from the British music press in the early 1990s, but the ideas behind it go back to krautrock and to the long-form experiments of the late 1980s. This guide covers the essential names and the albums to start with.
Where the name comes from
The critic Simon Reynolds coined the term in Melody Maker in late 1993. It spread after his March 1994 review of Bark Psychosis’s Hex in Mojo, and in May 1994, writing in The Wire, he defined it as rock instruments put to non-rock purposes.
The roots
Krautrock is a central influence: the first wave borrowed its motorik pulse and its one- or two-chord melodies, and Can, Neu!, Faust and Cluster are named as key sources. Closer to home, Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991) stretched songs into long forms drawing on jazz, contemporary classical music and space rock, and Slint’s Spiderland (1991) brought the dramatic shifts between quiet and loud. For the background, see what is krautrock and what is a motorik beat.
The first wave
After Bark Psychosis’s Hex (1994), Tortoise released Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996), the album critics credit with making them a post-rock icon. Godspeed You! Black Emperor followed with F♯ A♯ ∞ (1997) and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000), and Sigur Rós released Ágætis byrjun (1999); much of their wider exposure came from the use of their music on television and in film, above all their 2005 single “Hoppípolla”.
I tell the story of prog, one of post-rock’s many sources, in my books →
The second wave
Mogwai formed in Glasgow in 1995 and debuted with Mogwai Young Team (1997). Explosions in the Sky formed in Austin, Texas, in 1999; The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003) is generally considered their best-known album. Both bands, along with Japan’s Mono, are named among the more popular post rock acts of the new millennium.
Where post-rock meets prog
Progressive rock is one of the many styles post-rock draws on, and the two share a taste for long forms and slow builds. On the heavier side, The Ocean, formed in Berlin in 2001, are classed as both post-metal and progressive metal. For more context, see what is post-rock and what is a drone in music, and for its opposite number, math rock bands, which writers on the genre describe as the other side of the same coin.
Hear it for yourself
Three albums to start with: Spiderland (1991) by Slint, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) by Tortoise and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000) by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Go deeper
For more terms like this one, browse the progressive rock glossary, and for the label that sits closest to post-rock’s ambitions, read what is art rock.