In keeping with my recent recent posts about
Main,
Ice & Techno Animal I thought I'd go into a bit more detail on UK's Lost Generation of
Post-Rock. Good ole Professor Reynolds was writing about these groups in the pages of
Melody Maker from at least 1991 onwards. There's was an article in the 91 Christmas issue of
Melody Maker with no byline that I assume was penned by Simon. It documented the first stirrings of a new (non)scene that included a bunch of disparate musical units committed to taking their music to the limits well away from the commercial alternative business of the time.
Cranes were the hot topic with their 91 classic
Wings Of Joy but they weren't what was soon to be called post-rock. They were a one off post-goth/industrial band with, and I quote 'a lush Scott Walker/Euro cabaret grandeur.' Anyway
AR Kane's (forefathers of UK post-rock) label
H.ark get a mention with their roster containing
Papa Sprain &
Butterfly Child. Kevin Martin's label
Pathological rate a mention too with his own great band
Techno Animal plus
Oxbow (whatever happened to them?). Avant Yanks
Cop Shoot Cop and
Twin Infinitives era
Royal Trux get thrown in the mix as well. But it was future post-rock icons
Disco Inferno, Bark Psychosis and
Main who were the most celebrated/anticipated in this article as some kind of future saviours of what was still being called
Avant-Rock. Two years later in 1993 the lost generation were still dubbed as
Avant-Rock along with the speculative term C
yborg-Rock, which never really gained any traction. I guess weird non UK bands like
Young Gods and
The Boredoms would have fitted this category with relative ease. In the UK though more and more groups like
Insides, EAR, Moonshake Scorn, Ice, Seefeel were displaying un-rock tendencies in a beyond rock context so this wasn't a classification that was to properly fit.
Avant-Rock still implied that the genre was still rock'n'roll at its core despite innovations and modern tendencies. While half of what ended up being called
Post-Rock still rocked in some mutant form, the other half was not so rockin. Hence the term
Post-Rock making perfect sense.
The thing is this music was already under my skin so by the time Simon Reynolds came up with the term
Post-Rock for these bands in an article for
Wire magazine's May 1994 issue (reprinted in
Bring The Noise pages 186-193) it kind of didn't really matter. I've never really thought about it before but I guess it was named in hindsight as the scene had been going for 3 or 4 years already. As is usually the case with these things a demise was on the way with only a few classics of the genre to be released after 1994.
Post-Rock now also included the likes of
O'rang, Laika, Flying Saucer Attack,
Pram &
Movietone. Parallels were being drawn to other artists on the outer musical limits like
Paul Schutze, Jim O'Rourke, Thomas Koner, Aphex Twin, Eddie Prevost, Zoviet France etc. In an article in
Melody Maker in July 1994 past artists were retroactively inducted into a post-rock hall of fame lineage from
The Velvet Underground to
Krautrock legends
Neu, Faust &
Cluster to
Brian Eno to
Post-Punk groups like
PIL, Cabs and
The Pop Group to 80s UK noise/bliss rockers from
JAMC, MBV, Spaceman 3, Loop, The Cocteau Twins, AR Kane etc.
Post-Rock was all about samplers, drum machines, studios, effects, sequencers, jettisoning the guitar as a riff apparatus and integrating the techniques of dub, 70s
Miles Davis,
Can, hip-hop, ambient & techno into rock. Guitars were still sometimes used but in more of an unfamiliar and un-rock way. Mixing real time instrument playing with sampling was the raison d'etre for some which gave the recordings a really strange edge. Others opted for a wholly synthetic approach. This bunch of groups rarely sounded like one another, they were on the outside, went out into these zones alone and wore that status like a badge. Some were beat scientists, while others severed beats altogether and space was the place. Anyway that doesn't really sound like
Explosions In The Sky does it? This UK shit was the shit! This was the sound of my bedroom in the early 90s while your more accessable rock/pop stuff (Shoegazers, Breeders, Pavement, Mazzy Star, Portishead etc.) from the era made it into the lounge rooms of the share houses I lived in at the time,
Post-Rock was not embraced by all and remained in the ghetto of my bedroom (along with strange septic tanks like
Slint, Trumans Water, Thinking Fellers Union 282 et al.
). This parallelled how
Post-Rock was pretty marginalised in the outside world too apart from
Stereolab who were quite the cult band.....I suppose.
I think a top 14 of the original UK
Post-Rock is in order. This is when the term made sense, meant something and the music was bloody great.
THE TOP 14
Hydra-Calm (compilation) - Main [1992]
Eva Luna - Moonshake [1992]
May - Papa Sprain [1992]
Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements - Stereolab [1993]
Iron Lung - Pram [1993]
Under The Skin - Ice [1993]
Quique - Seefeel [1994]
Hex - Bark Psychosis [1994]
Evanescence - Scorn [1994]
DI GO POP - Disco Inferno [1994]
Silver Apples of The Moon - Laika [1994]
Herd Of Instinct - O'rang [1994]
Further - Flying Saucer Attack [1995]
Re-Entry - Techno Animal [1995]
*The top 14 has just one record per artist.
These are in chronological order.
This list is by no means comprehensive.
Each of the top 14 will be featured in a future blog post.
**
Stereolab, Flying Saucer Attack &
Third Eye Foundation all released gems after 1995. I must admit I didn't really follow the next wave of
Post-Rock groups from the UK. I'm actually struggling to come up with any of their names beyond the Flying Saucer Attack affiliates
Piano Magic, Crescent and
Amp.
