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Kindle Notes & Highlights
post-rock has often acted like a flashlight pointing into the great unknown. It’s an acknowledgement that our vocabulary of music is currently inadequate, leaving ‘post’
as the only appropriate allusion to the presence of a mysterious other.
they “used the rock armoury of drums, bass and guitars but eschewed conventional song structure”,
As the size of the group grew, Godspeed performances became gigantic, undifferentiated masses of drone. Ilavsky tells me that they were akin to Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable performances with The Velvet Underground in the 60s: walls of sound and 16mm film loops, decorated with melody but ultimately driven by what Ilavsky refers to as “thrust and endurance”.
“Moya” (named after Godspeed’s own Mike Moya) was an interpretation of Górecki’s third symphony, with emulations of the composer’s slow, undulating flights of strings flanked by tremolo guitars and bolstered in force by drums.
The standard 4/4 drumbeat will always be bound to the sensation of forward or horizontal movement. Motorway drives, runaway trains. In contrast, snare rolls evoke ascension; the impression of rising toward the skies and reaching for the fireworks that detonated above.
