Storm Static Sleep: A Pathway Through Post Rock

by Jack Chuter

I’ve spoken frequently about listening to post-rock being a process of surrender, or acknowledging the triviality of perceiver and performer amidst the soundscape that swallows them. I also think it’s healthy to surrender the connotative baggage of the term ‘post-rock’ when listening to music that supposedly falls under the heading. Post-rock offers a fantastic way for a music fan to navigate the saturated landscape of sound and consistently discover good music. Without it, I never would have come across the likes of This Will Destroy You, God Is An Astronaut, Mono, Tortoise, Maybeshewill or Disco Inferno. That said, treat post-rock with scepticism. The semantic development of the term has been driven as much by misunderstanding and error as it has by careful reasoning. How else would it be able to house artists as disparate Pram and Jakob? I see a lot of attempts to succinctly define post-rock, and arguments over whether a band qualifies as a member of the genre or not. I urge the reader to abandon this desire to articulate post-rock, and even let go of the impulse to make sense of it. Avoid using the term as a frame of reference when listening to new music, even if it was post-rock that got you there. Don’t let it curb your ability to be naïve and fresh-eared when listening to new sounds for the first time. Use post-rock as a map with which to plot a scenic route through sound, and when you stop to engage with a point of interest, put the map away again.