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Drowned In Sound Quote:

''Distant Street Lights' isn't merely about lolloping guitars over a formulaic backing, but more importantly screams the word ‘Ambition!’ with every subtly-crafted chord.

'Fractures' is possibly the most gripping piece of music you'll hear this year, almost like the final chapter from a Jack Arnott novel. For a band still in their infancy, that is no mean compliment.'

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Originally posted by The New Mr. Rainbow (vitun):
The 2007 albums I listen to when I'm in a post-rock mood are:

Battles
the Field
Burial
Sunburned Hand of the Man/Sunburned Circle
Panda Bear
Antibalas

Granted, it seems none of these albums fits comfortably in the post-rock canon, but I think their forms and effect on/in me are similar.

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Grails' last album was better and they aren't really postrock either although they have some elements of it.

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Originally posted by krea:

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Originally posted by The New Mr. Rainbow (vitun):
The 2007 albums I listen to when I'm in a post-rock mood are:

Battles
the Field
Burial
Sunburned Hand of the Man/Sunburned Circle
Panda Bear
Antibalas

Granted, it seems none of these albums fits comfortably in the post-rock canon, but I think their forms and effect on/in me are similar.

Well, if this is postrock, than the conclusion on the first couple of pages that the genre is useless is definitely true.

Battles is some kind of brillant development of mathrock.
Burial is normally tagged 'dubstep', but to me it sounds like breakbeat-infused triphop.
Antibalas is modern afrobeat.
Sunburned Hand of the Man is not composed and structured enough to qualify as postrock. They jam way too much. They are more in the vein of psychedelic rock and avantgarde jazz.

I like the Chicago-school much better than the noisy, mostly non-american bands as GYBE, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Mono etc. The bands have to be really creative to get much out of the noise-silence-form and most of them aren't. The Chicago-school needs greater compositional skills and form the basis for more exciting ideas.

I haven't really heard anything good this year I would characterise as postrock. The new Pelican is weak and more stonerrock than postrock. Grails' last album was better and they aren't really postrock either although they have some elements of it.

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Originally posted by DFelon204409:
I think in terms of the kind of post-rock that has been enjoyed in the past few years (GY!BE, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros), I feel like the bands that complicate the genre are usually the best. My favorite is probably Jaga Jazzist who are just shockingly original and beautiful. The other band that comes to mind is Ghastly City Sleep who are just unreal as well though not as original and inventive. They're just good. I also have a friend who does pretty good stuff. His name is Burton Wagner and all of his albums are up for free online. Here are some uploads:

Jaga Jazzist - "Swedenborsgske Rom" - http://www.mediafire.com/?3t2mz9024jy
Ghastly City Sleep - "Ice Creaks" - http://www.mediafire.com/?1lxwvg0nmzy
Burton Wagner - "August 3, 2007" -

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Originally posted by The New Mr. Rainbow (vitun):
I have no use for genre!

but really, think about the discography arc of Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky...

To me, they let the genre strangle them. Now they bore me to tears.

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Originally posted by RavingLunatic:

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Originally posted by DFelon204409:
I think in terms of the kind of post-rock that has been enjoyed in the past few years (GY!BE, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros), I feel like the bands that complicate the genre are usually the best. My favorite is probably Jaga Jazzist who are just shockingly original and beautiful. The other band that comes to mind is Ghastly City Sleep who are just unreal as well though not as original and inventive. They're just good. I also have a friend who does pretty good stuff. His name is Burton Wagner and all of his albums are up for free online. Here are some uploads:

Jaga Jazzist - "Swedenborsgske Rom" - http://www.mediafire.com/?3t2mz9024jy
Ghastly City Sleep - "Ice Creaks" - http://www.mediafire.com/?1lxwvg0nmzy
Burton Wagner - "August 3, 2007" -

Hey, thanks for these suggestions. I read a positive review of Ghastly City SLeep recentoy on Delusions of Adequacy, so I'm looking forward to listening to that one.

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Originally posted by krea:
To me it seems strange to tag a couple of bands as postrock if you have no use for genre.

Genre-tags are a pain in the ass because when it comes to the small subgenres they often are hard to define. But they come in handy as reference-points so we don't have to say 'simple, energetic, three-chord beat music' everytime we want to talk about punk.

But you're right about the strangeling although I'm not quite sure how much the bands themselves think about the genre they're playing.

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Originally posted by The New Mr. Rainbow (vitun):
Honestly it doesn't matter to me whether they consciously thought "Oh I'm in a post-rock band - I should play this way." But the way that Mogwai's music has grown sounds like people writing music from the same starting place and never wandering far from the home area, eventually trampling it.

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so, which is the best post-rock album of the year? Explosions in the sky? 65daysofstatic? Mono? What's your favorite?