Storm Static Sleep: A Pathway Through Post Rock

by Jack Chuter

Yet the records most pertinent to post-rock were the two that followed Popular Mechanics: 1999’s Low Birth Weight and 2000’s Artists’ Rifles, both of which were released on Joshi’s new Rocket Girl label. Johnson mentions that these are the only two albums for which post-rock feels like a remotely appropriate tag, for the way that they “used the rock armoury of drums, bass and guitars but eschewed conventional song structure”, as he puts it. Not to mention the fact that Low Birth Weight is Johnson’s personal favourite Piano Magic record. “If you played someone that record now and didn’t tell them when it was made, I think it’d be interesting to see them hazard a guess at when it came out. It’s stood the test of time, because it’s sonically a lot more interesting than a lot of our other records. I’m not entirely embarrassed by the words either.”