For me top 5:

1. Mogwai - Young Team
2. Godspeed - Lift Your Skinny Fists..
3. Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
4. Mogwai - Young Team
5. Godspeed - F#A Infinity

For me those three bands are the best post rock bands around. Young Team totally changed my taste in music. And any band who can make ep tracks as good as Small Children In The Background deserve all the praise they can get.

I've had a really hard time getting into post-rock. I think it's my ADHD because it gets too drawn out and... well, boring.

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Harrison:
For me top 5:

1. Mogwai - Young Team
2. Godspeed - Lift Your Skinny Fists..
3. Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
4. Mogwai - Young Team
5. Godspeed - F#A Infinity

For me those three bands are the best post rock bands around. Young Team totally changed my taste in music. And any band who can make ep tracks as good as Small Children In The Background deserve all the praise they can get.

Wow, Young Team good to earn both your #1 and #4 spots!

My Post-Rock Top 5:
1. Explosions in the Sky -- The Earth is not a Cold, Dead Place.
2. MONO -- You Are There (much much better than the reviews make it out to be.)
3. Godspeed -- Skinny Fists
4. Explosions in the Sky -- The Rescue
5. Do Make Say Think -- Goodbye Enemy Airship

Notice: no Mogwai.

I think Mogwai is great for the definitive record they made with "Young Team", and "Come on Die Young" is their second-best album in my opinion. But overall, I would I prefer Godspeed, especially for their behemoth F#AInfinity which really set the standard for me in terms of pulling of 20 minute epic songs! Incredible.

Sorry, although i clearly do think Young Team is fantastic i cant justify it being in my top 5 twice! No.4 was meant to be Come On Die Young.

1. Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (GYBE!)
2. Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn (DMST)
3. Born into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upward (ASMZ)
4. Mr. Beast (yes, it's Mogwai's best album, bring on the flames)
5. The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (Pelican counts, right? if not I'll put in Yanqui UXO instead)

note that I left out Dirty Three on purpose since I don't think they're "post rock", otherwise they'd have something at #2 for sure

This message has been edited. Last edited by: either_or,

1.Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas Toward Heaven (Godspeed You Black Emperor!)
2.The Destruction of Small Ideals (65daysofstatic)
3.Easily Misunderstood(The Samuel Jackson Five)
4.Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever (Explosions in the Sky)
5.Kafabindunya EP (Kafabindunya)
6.A Lazarus Taxon (Tortoise)
7.Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn (Do Make Say Think)
8.He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms (A Silver Mt. Zion)
9.Agaetis Byrjun (Sigur Rós)
10.Copia (Eluvium)

I think that Dirty Three is a non-post-rock band that makes a lot of songs that can be considered post rock. I mean certainly you could go through their discography and maybe come up with enough post-rock songs to make an album but the fact is that post-rock is periperal to their style. So while Dirty Three has some great albums, none of them are actually post-rock albums.

Any thoughts on the most recent Explosions album?

Russian Circles - Enter

This is sounding really awesome to me right now. Fairly heavy stuff, though it has its lighter moments as well. One thing I like about it is that they don't mess around as much as a lot of post-rock bands (like GYBE). Nice and compact like EITS's albums. It's 6 songs and 42 minutes.

I read in a review for the new Sea & Cake album that the band is post-rock. But I briefly listened to an old album of theirs that definitely wasn't...?

You, You're a History in Rust is very good and it's quite a grower.

Explosion's new album only has two good songs imo, "Catastrophe and the Cure" and "Welcome, Ghosts"

This is the problem with these titles:

Any album which came out later than 1956 is "Post-Rock" and all the albums which showed post-1976 are "Post-Punk". That's really helpful!!

quote:

Originally posted by BContrat:
I read in a review for the new Sea & Cake album that the band is post-rock. But I briefly listened to an old album of theirs that definitely wasn't...?

Explosion's new album only has two good songs imo, "Catastrophe and the Cure" and "Welcome, Ghosts"

Sea and Cake share a member or two with Tortoist which is probably where they got the post-rock label. I really don't like their jazz-tinged music at all.

The first few times I listened to EITS's new album, I thought it was pretty mediocre, but after shelving it for a month or two, I came back to it, and now I really like it. Not as good as their previous two, but pretty close to them. I've been in a really post-rock mood lately.

Who would you compare Do Make Say Think to? I've never heard anything of theirs.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
This is the problem with these titles:

Any album which came out later than 1956 is "Post-Rock" and all the albums which showed post-1976 are "Post-Punk". That's really helpful!!

Makes you sort of wonder what kind of names they'll come up with for genres 15-20 years from now don't it. You can't do post-post-something.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
This is the problem with these titles:

Any album which came out later than 1956 is "Post-Rock" and all the albums which showed post-1976 are "Post-Punk". That's really helpful!!

And yet, everyone here seems to know what was meant by the name of this thread.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
This is the problem with these titles:

Any album which came out later than 1956 is "Post-Rock" and all the albums which showed post-1976 are "Post-Punk". That's really helpful!!

Start studying all genres of art. Then figure out what "post" means. Then it all makes sense. It's hard to explain if you don't see why postmodernism differs from modernism, or postimpressionism differs from impressionism and so forth.

quote:

Originally posted by BContrat:
I read in a review for the new Sea & Cake album that the band is post-rock. But I briefly listened to an old album of theirs that definitely wasn't...?

Basically what Raving Lunatic said.

The Sea and Cake are a sophisticated pop pleasure. They're not about individual songs so much as entire albums of just beautiful, breezy, and delightful shit. I think this new record may be my favorite of theirs since The Fawn. More consistent, at least. "Exact to Me" seems to be the only disposable song on the album, to me.

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:
Russian Circles - Enter

This is sounding really awesome to me right now. Fairly heavy stuff, though it has its lighter moments as well. One thing I like about it is that they don't mess around as much as a lot of post-rock bands (like GYBE). Nice and compact like EITS's albums. It's 6 songs and 42 minutes.

It is a great album, but it is really on the heavy side. While it is true that it has its lighter moments, they are generally few and far between. My problem with this album is just how exhausting it is to listen to. I have such trouble getting through a whole song, let alone the entire album. But sometimes, when I am in the right mood and I can handle sitting right through the CD, this album just blows me away.

Yeah, it's kind of weird that I'm so into that album because I'm usually not that into hard and heavy stuff, but I think that a big part of the reason that I don't like much punk or hard rock is because of the screamy vocals. Since this is instrumental, I think it goes down a lot easier for me. I don't think this album would've worked if it had been the standard 60+ minutes that most post-rock albums run, but at 44 minutes, it's perfect.

Where do people think post-rock will go from here? As with a lot of genres there are a lot of bands who jump on the bandwagon and offer nothing more than a watered down version of what has gone before. Do you think the genre will pretty much stay the same as we know it now and possibly become tiring or can people see it being a genre that will continue to evolve and be creative?

I would be interested to see what you all think on this.

Anyone like the Mercury Program? I haven't listened to them in a long time but i'm pretty sure they would fall under post-rock?

I also just love Sigur Rós.. I can speak Icelandic and let me tell you when you get the lyrics too those songs just capture something amazing.

A side note - I have only seen Explosions live once and they were terrible! All they did was play the same stuff the same way as on the cd. They had no lights, no dialogue with the audience, they didnt even say the titles of the songs. I couldn´t help thinking of what I needed to get from the grocery store when I got out of there because I was so bored. Anyone had a similar experience or was that just an exceptionally bad show?

The Lost Children Net Label has lots of Instrumental and Post-Rock EPs and Albums available to download for free, just in case anyone is interested....