Storm Static Sleep: A Pathway Through Post Rock

by Jack Chuter

“The commitment to placing your individual instrument within the larger sound and really subsuming individual ideas of identity – and certainly individual ideas of personality and virtuosity – is something that I think is very important to what Godspeed does,” Ilavky says. “When you think about what they’ve managed to pull off versus, let’s say, Pink Floyd at their best, there’s maybe something more bombastic and indulgent about some of our big heroes of prog rock. Godspeed gets that criticism and it’s fair enough – to some ears and eyes, they’re also bombastic or heavy-handed. But I do feel like one reason Godspeed connects with so many listeners is that they very deliberately subsume showmanship and personality and quite literally keep their heads down in every sense. I think of them as an orchestral punk-rock band, in the sense that I feel their values have much more to do with music-making as honest labour, music as oppositional and utopic, but not escapist or hypocritical, and music as something that can save your fucking life – so you’d better protect it from co-optation and preserve a space for it to stand on its own and stand for itself.” For me – and I share this thought with Ilavsky too – there is a certain gulf between the likes of Godspeed and Pink Floyd. In fact, this is also where I initially perceived the distinction between ‘rock’ and ‘post-rock’ to exist. Both bands are huge in sound, but with Godspeed the energy flow is reversed; their creation crashes on...