10 Albums to Get You Into Post-Rock Music

10 Albums to Get You Into Post-Rock Music Slept-on Essentials From Post-Rock's Glory Age Bark Psychosis - Hex (1994) Long Fin Killie - Houdini (1995) Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996) Neil Young - Dead Man (1996) More Slept-on Essentials From Post-Rock's Glory Age Mogwai - Mogwai Young Team (1997) Swans - Swans Are Dead (1998) Set Fire to Flames - Sings Reign Rebuilder (2001) Natural Snow Buildings - The Winter Ray (2006) 1. Glenn Branca - The Ascension (1981) Acclaimed and groundbreaking modern classical iconoclast Glenn Branca released what can only be called one of the most important, prophetic, and incisively compelling records of the 20th Century. For all the post-rock superstar bands of the '90s, "The Ascension" is its pretext. Without "The Ascension", post-rock would look very different. Branca massed electric guitars in alternate tunings and conducted them like a symphony orchestra at the edge of feedback. The pieces build in vast harmonic waves until the overtones start singing on their own, sound no single player could produce. Members of Sonic Youth passed through his ensembles and carried the lessons into rock proper. This is the genre's prehistory in one record, proof the electric guitar could be massed into pure architecture a decade before anyone had a name for it. 2. Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden (1988) I've talked at length about why Talk Talk is one of the musical greatest groups to ever exist, and I've spent most of that time talking about their magnum opus, "Laughing Stock", but that record's predecessor, the through-composed, meditative "Spirit of Eden", is just as good in many ways, and serves as the better introduction to the band's radical change to post-rock architecture. They were a synth-pop band at their commercial peak; they walked into a darkened church studio and emerged with this: hours of improvisation edited into six songs of silence, hush, and sudden flame. Mark Hollis sings like a man rattling breath, and every instrument sounds miked from across the room. The label sued in disbelief. It's the genre's founding act of renunciation, pop stardom traded for stillness, and the record that taught rock the power of the space between notes. Soothing, introspective, peaceful, and beautiful where mind blowing melodies evolve out of nowhere just to disappear into the void again. 3. Slint - Spiderland (1991) A record that is of utmost importance to me personally, and one that I cherish dearly, since I spent a significant amount of time in the city this record was crafted in. The malaise of cornerstone Mid-Western dread sits front-and-center in the soundstage on Slint's "Spiderland". It is that dread, tension, and anxious fervor that defines the remarkable sense of mood and tone throughout this record. A groundbreaking record for many different sub-sects of rock music: from post-hardcore and punk rock, to post-rock and math rock. "Spiderland" is a meticulous blend of genre and form. Four young men in Louisville recorded these six songs in four days, and the singer checked into psychiatric care not long after. The music moves in whispered narration and clean, crawling arpeggios until the tension snaps into screaming release. Math-rock precision serves pure dread. Almost nobody brought it on release; nearly everyone who did started a band. Spiderland is the genre's dark scripture, the quiet-loud blueprint a whole generation built cathedrals from. 4. Roy Montgomery - Temple IV (1996) Roy Montgomery, of Hash Jar Tempo fame, crafted here what can only be called one of the greatest psychedelic guitar rocks of all time. Montgomery recorded this alone in New Zealand, layering guitar over guitar until the instrument became fog rolling off the Pacific. No drums to speak of, no vocals, just delay-soaked lines circling ancient, modal shapes named for Mayan ruins. His playing carries decades of underground lineage from the Christchurch scene into open air. It's the genre's great solitary statement, proof post-rock's scale could come from one person and an amplifier rather than an army. It's lonely, contemplative, and drenched in vivid atmospheric imagery, and one of the great post-rock works of the 1990's. ROY MONTGOMERY TEMPLE IV 5. Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind (1996) While I personally prefer the live feel of these songs on "Swans Are Dead", "Soundtracks for the Blind" is undeniably one of the most groundbreaking works of experimental ballistic artistry ever conceived and serves as a perfect introduction to what makes Swans' songwriting so enduring and relevant. "Soundtracks for the Blind" is dark, primally-propulsive music, a nihilistic, misanthropic fever-dream cataloging all of our tiny little worries and pale dreams into a musical encyclopedia on the suffering of the modern world; it is the tragedy of the human condition in song. Swans ended their first life with this two-and-a-half-hour colossus, folding tape loops, field recordings, and found voices into their punishing drone. Answering-machine messages and dying relatives drift through passages of terrifying beauty; "Helpless Child" builds for fifteen minutes and still ends too soon. It's less an album than a haunted archive. The record dragged post-rock toward total sound-world construction, where music, memory, and noise stop being separate things. 6. Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun (1999) At the tail-end of the 1990's, post-rock was still fusing, morphing, and evolving, taking on new forms and emulsifying into deeper and richer subtext just below the surface. "Ágætis byrjun" is the record's answer to the pure expression of emotion through sustained and escalating atmosphere. Jónsi bowed his guitar and sang in Icelandic and invented syllables, his falsetto rising over strings and brass like something geological waking up. The songs move at glacial pace toward climaxes that feel earned rather than engineered. Nobody needed to understand a word. It carried post-rock to festival stages and film scores without cheapening it, and made the case that the genre's abstraction could hold naked, overwhelming emotion. 7. Boris - Flood (2000) I've talked at length about this album's greatness before, especially on my drone releases list. Boris is no less than one of the greatest musical acts to ever exist, a robust group that can do it all, and yet, "Flood" may actually be their crowning, magnum opus. A fascinating commentary on states of change, the unpredictability and inevitability of nature, chaos, and the apocalypse, and one of the greatest records of the 2000's. The Japanese trio stretched one composition across seventy minutes: a lone guitar figure repeating like rain on water, slowly gathering into a crushing doom crescendo before receding into drone. Patience becomes the whole drama. Boris were already shape-shifters proven sludge and psych, but here they proved heaviness itself could be a slow weather system. Flood joined post-rock's architecture to metal's mass, and both genres came away changed. 8. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000) When music fans and nerds get together and talk about records being "transcendental", you can feel an air of pretension circling their words. It starts to feel like that word is misused and misattributed to music that simply feels "big" or "epic" or "emotional", when really, music that invokes transcendence from the self and the material world, should be doing more important things than that. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's astonishing, career defining masterpiece does all of these things, and it is that rare record that is deserving of the transcendental tag. It is a symphonic, beautiful, crushing, sonic odyssey through the end-times where the instruments feel possessed by the spirit of anarchism the band is known for. Four side-long movements, nine musicians, tape recordings, field recordings, and found voices woven through their punishing drone. Answering-machine messages and dying relatives drift through passages of terrifying beauty; "Helpless Child" builds for fifteen minutes and still ends too soon. It is less an album than a haunted archive. The record dragged post-rock toward total sound-world construction, where music, memory, and noise stop being separate things. 9. Disco Inferno - The 5 EPs (Compilation) (2011) One of my all-time favorite groups, and though they don't have the name recognition of a Godspeed or a Talk Talk, they are every bit deserving of their placement here. Disco Inferno made some of the most experimental and wildly innovative music of the 1990's, and this compilation encapsulates that boundary-breaking spirit in full. In the early '90s, this London trio wired their instruments to samplers: the guitar triggered birdsong and breaking glass, the drums fired off doors slamming and thunder. Pop songs dissolved into concrete sound and reassembled mid-verse. Almost nobody noticed at the time, and the EPs stayed scattered until this compilation gathered them. It documents the genre's most radical ideas: the rock band as sampler orchestra, decades ahead of its audience. With the popularity and mass acceptance of sampling in modern music, these EPs showcase just how ahead of their time Disco Inferno truly was, and how revolutionary these ideas were for post-rock in the 1990's. 10. Valium Angelein - Black Moon (Compilation) (2020) Duster is one of my all-time favorite groups, and it's been wonderful to see albums like "Straosphere" surge in popularity over the last decade or so, and while Duster's slacker rock and space rock adjacent sounds are incredible, Duster's members' side project, Valium Angelein, is just as important in understanding post-rock's greater importance and development in the underground. They recorded this side project in the late '90s, slow transmissions of hissing four-track guitar and keyboard drift, then let it vanish into obscurity. Numero Group's reissue of the group's entire discography, "Black Moon" arrived just as a new generation discovered slowcore through bedroom speakers and streaming rabbit holes. The music sounds like satellite signals from a failing orbiter, intimate and vast at once. It stands for post-rock's secret bedroom lineage, cosmic scale achieved with borrowed gear and no budget. Some Other Picks: Talk Talk - Laughing Stock Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞ Slint - Slint (EP) Swans - To Be Kind Boredoms - Super æ Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You Sigur Ros - () Boris - Dronevil -Example- Windy & Carl - Drawing of Sound Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die Sonn O))) & Boris - Altar Valium Angelein - Hier kommt der schwarze Mond Dick Slessig - Wichita Lineman / Guinnevere Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O. Swans - The Seer Slowdive - Slowdive (EP) A Silver Mt. Zion - He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms... Set Fire to Flames - Telegraphs in Negative / Mouths Trapped in Static Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull Sweep the Leg Johnny - Going Down Swinin' Some Other Picks Pt. 2: Boris - Bootleg -Feedbacker- British Sea Power - Disco Elysium Mount Eerie - Night Palace Huremic - Seeking Darkness Moonshake - Eva Luna Sonic Youth - Washing Machine Mercury Rev - Yerself Is Steam Modest Mouse & 764-HERO - Whenever You See Fit (Single) Disco Inferno - D. I. Go Pop Hesse Kassel - Morir saltando Stereolab - Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements Sigur Ros - Takk... purl - Winter Seefeel - Quique Lift to Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads alice protozoa smoke - opulent familiarity, lotus horizon Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 05.14.03: Nantes, France Mogwai - Come On Die Young Slowdive - Pygmalion Tortoise - TNT UNWND - Live Leaves Some Other Picks Pt. 3: The Newfound Interest in Connecticut - Tell Me About the Long Dark Path Home Cerberus Shoal - Homb Jakob - Solace City of Caterpillar - City of Caterpillar The Jim Yoshii Pile-Up - It's Winter Here Kiran Leonard - Trespass on Foot Unwound - Challenge for a Civilized Society Corea - Los peores 7 peores km de mi vida Love, Claire - Love, Claire Andrew Prahlow - Outer Wilds what is your name? - The Now Now and Never Swans - The Glowing Man Old - Formula Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada E.P. (EP) The Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - "Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward." Bluetile Lounge - Half-Cut Glenn Branca - Lesson No. 1 (EP) Swans - Birthing Spectrum - Highs, Lows and Heavenly Blows Boredoms - Super Roots 7 (EP) Some Other Picks Pt. 4: Stereolab - Dots and Loops Godspeed You! Black Emperor - "No Title as of 13 February 2024, 28,340 Dead" Jaime Sin Tierra - Tren Corea - Quien encuentra a la madre conoce a los hijos Boris - Performing "Flood" Swans - The Gate Macha - See It Another Way Bark Psychosis - ///Codename: Dustsucker Stina Nordenstam - Dynamite MONO - Hymn to the Immortal Wind Johnny Foreigner - We Left You Sleeping and Gone Now Pretend - Bones in the Soil, Rust in the Oil Hash Jar Tempo - Well Oiled Godspeed You! Black Emperor - John Peel Sessions: Live Mogwai - Happy Songs for Happy People Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - Horses in the Sky Kairon; IRSE! - Ujubasajuba Maruja - Pain to Power Bauer - Astronauta olvidado Vincent Gallo - When January---> may 2022 Some Other Picks Pt. 5: toe - The Book About My Idle Plot on a Vague Anxiety Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place Earth - Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method Long Fin Killie - Buttergut (EP) purl - Summer Aspasia - La extension de tu silencio Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Live at Paradiso, Amsterdam NL on 2002-04-18 Black Country, New Road - For the First Time Sonic Youth - Murray Street Moonshake - Big Good Angel (EP) Parannoul - After the Night Neurosis - The Eye of Every Storm Branca - Symphony No. 1 (Tonal Plexus) Seefeel - Polyfusia (Compilation) Floating Points - Kuiper (EP) Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Alleluiah! Don't Bend Ascend Sailors With Wax Wings - Sailors With Wax Wings world's end girlfriend - The Lie Lay Land Racing Mount Pleasant - Racing Mount Pleasant Sprain - The Lamb as Effigy