* (restored)
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Post-rock first appeared in inverted commas and it might have been better if it’d stayed there. But it didn’t, and it looks as though we’re stuck with it. Still, never mind:
1. Bark Psychosis, “Scum”
As usually happens with genres, the label has provoked no end of anguish among artists and audiences, all understandably protective of their identities, keen not to be cashed out for the convenience of lazy journalist slags.
2. Slint, “Breadcrumb Trail”
I think post-rock is a label in the same way punk is a label: “Never Mind The Bollocks” sounds nothing like “Horses”, which sounds nothing like “Ramones Leave Home”, which sounds nothing like “The Feeding of the Five Thousand”, which sounds nothing like “Double Nickels On The Dime”, which sounds nothing like “Bad Brains”, which sounds nothing like “The Scream”, which … yet, when we talk about punk, we kind of understand what we mean. We understand that we’re talking about an attitude, a discipline, moreso than about how loud the guitars are and whether you can hear the words.
3. Mogwai, “Rollerball”
What I’m saying, then, is that post-rock was a useful label during a phase in pop music when the fabric of what a band / performance / recording could be was getting playfully tailored into new shapes. Of course, this goes on all the time, often un-apprehended. The cyclic view of history as applied to pop music doesn’t sell any significant number of inky newspapers, which used to be considered an important thing. But more importantly, a label could be a license to create.
4. Disco Inferno, “Footprints In Snow”
It probably isn’t important to point out where this stuff comes from, exactly, its precedents. They’re well documented. More important than any one figure, I think, is access to technology. I’m pretty sure about this: throughout the 80s and into the 90s, a bunch of affordable, viable studio technology emerged, meaning that it was no longer absolutely necessary to be Brian Eno or Trevor Horn before you could spend days playing around with samplers or synthesizers to see what happened. Conventional wisdom has it that this is part of how acid house happened; I think the same forces were at work here, too.
5. Godspeed You Black Emperor!, “Moya”
It’s also tempting to consider a lot of this music as oppositional, or at least pointedly individual. To take one example: for a long time I didn’t care for Godspeed, for exhaustively thought-out reasons I won’t bore you with. But, as I’ve realised, what happens in Godspeed’s music is defiantly their own thing. The reverent, solemn pacing of their music is as purposeful as the presentation of their records and live performances. That I used to bridle at this, then, was my problem.
6. Stereolab, “Super-Electric”
A drone can be a powerful thing. It says things like “I persist,” and “I contain multitudes”. Anyone who’s had the chance to hear Charlemagne Palestine’s “Strumming Music” or Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “One Note Samba” will have heard how a simple group of notes repeated over and over again can reveal animation and interest in a way that seems simultaneously magical, irresistible and defiant. In isolation, like in the Palestine performance, a drone can be beatific. Forced to exist among other musical events, a drone can feel inconvenient, itchy, destabilising. It can be, particularly in Stereolab’s music, the presence of an active resistance.
7. Tortoise, “Glass Museum”
I find it interesting to think about the relations between a lot of this music and vocals. In an earlier draft of this piece, I wrote that if there was any unifying concern of the music considered under this label, it might be that it desires deep reflection in the listener. That’s not quite sufficient, but I think there’s something to it. Somewhere and often, speech seems to have become a problem.
8. Bowery Electric, “Fear Of Flying”
Then again, words might only get in the way. The songs on Slint’s album Spiderland are sinister, elliptical stories set to measured, pacing music that feels disconcertingly like what brooding on deep hurts actually feels like. As the gathering storm of the last song on the record finally breaks, the narration becomes inaudible for a few crucial seconds, and the thread of exactly what awful thing was going on becomes forever lost to the listener. But the scariest song on this frightening record is still the instrumental.
9. Gastr del Sol, “Every Five Miles”
If we want to think about the practice of making music like one or another of these examples, we might start by thinking about manipulating context, as a director and editor manipulate the context of a shot in a film. For Don Caballero and Labradford, song titles become super-verbose, turned against their function, (“In the Absence of Strong Evidence to the Contrary, One May Step Out of the Way of the Charging Bull”) or otherwise disappear altogether (“S”, “Recorded and mixed at Sound of Music, Richmond, VA.”). Meanwhile, GYBE’s records materialise in editions that combine the haphazard and inscrutable with the painstakingly deliberate.
10. Miles Davis, “He Loved Him Madly” (part 1)
“Haphazard and inscrutable and painstakingly deliberate” would also be a fair description of Miles Davis’ “He Loved Him Madly”, a funereal elegy for Duke Ellington that sprawls like a luminescent jellyfish in a deep dark sea. The animation in this limpid music is animation in space, in timbre, and in utterance. Spliced and mixed down from hours of improv, it drifts, seemingly motionless, but under the surface it teems with meaning.
11. Labradford, “Lake Speed”
Portentous brooding isn’t the only permissible mode, even if some people seem to think otherwise. If this practice of music is truly open, after all, that means it must also being open to being upbeat, melodic, even charming. It might be an unlikely prospect that the Jonas Brothers will get together with Jim O’Rourke to do an album of faith-crisis-themed tropicalia with extra VCS3, but it doesn’t feel altogether impossible.
12. Do Make Say Think, “Classic Noodlanding”
There is something that I find particularly satisfying about any sort of music or theatre or cinema that attempts to engage with these concerns of space, context and utterance. I have some fussy, half-formed notion that doing so enables these artforms to access the audience’s imagination in the same way that fiction does, but I don’t have the theory chops to back these sorts of assertions up. Ultimately all I know is that it involves me in ways other music, including some of my favourite music, does not, and I like that.
13. Mono, “Follow The Map”
I know that I respond to recognising that people are trying to achieve something. It doesn’t have to be something brand new. I think there is a unique thrill that comes with witnessing a particular quality – I originally wrote ‘tangible effort’, but I might as well write ‘daring’ – that doesn’t come with anything else.
14. Pluramon, “Time (catharsia mix)”
It’s also a question of faith: willingness on the part of the listener to hear “He Loved Him Madly” as a drifting elegy is pretty much all that keeps it from sounding like a guttering jam session by a band that can’t remember how to play “Mood Indigo”. The listener has to be daring too.
But given the choice between someone who’s precisely in control of his utterance, and someone who might well fuck it up but is absolutely committed nonetheless, I’ll always opt for the latter. When we’re asked to bring something of ourselves to a performance or a film, we’re asked to do work. It’s always easier and more pleasurable to work with people who take care with what they do.
15. Fridge, “Five Four Child Voice”
I think the post-rock label identifies a phase in musical history where this sort of experimental play was something people became excited about. But I think that some of the music from this time remains so rewarding because of its interplay with more familiar forms and aesthetics. I think that experimentation for experimentation’s sake can often be valuable or remarkable, but I don’t think it’s often as daring or rewarding as expression is.
Critical theory or this or that other baggage isn’t necessary to either understand or justify wanting this sort of discovering-experience with music, because when you get ahold of it you feel a sensation that’s completely immediate. It’s a sea of possibilities, as P. Smith puts it, and we can walk into the waves any time we like.
16. Xinlisupreme, “All You Need Is Love Was Not True”
Music credits:
1. “Scum” by Bark Psychosis is on the compilations “Independency” and “Game Over”
2. “Breadcrumb Trail” by Slint is the first track on their album “Spiderland”
3. “Rollerball” by Mogwai is on the compilation “EP + 6”
4. “Footprints In Snow” by Disco Inferno is the last track on “D.I. Go Pop”
5. “Moya” by Godspeed You Black Emperor is on “Slow Riot For New Zerø Kanada”
6. “Super-Electric” by Stereolab is from “Switched On”.
7. “Glass Museum” by Tortoise is from “Millions Now Living Will Never Die”
8. “Fear of Flying” by Bowery Electric is on “Beat”
9. “Every Five Miles” by Gastr del Sol is from “Crookt, Crackt or Fly”.
10. “He Loved Him Madly” by Miles Davis is on “Get Up With It”
11. “Lake Speed” by Labradford is on their 1996 self-titled album.
12. “Classic Noodlanding” by Do Make Say Think is from “& Yet & Yet”
13. “Follow The Map” by Mono is on “Hymn To The Immortal Wind”
14. “Time (catharsia mix)” by Pluramon, featuring Julee Cruise & Keith Rowe, is on “Dreams Top Rock”
15. “Five Four Child Voice” by Fridge is on “Happiness”
16. “All You Need Is Love Was Not True” by Xinlisupreme is from “Tomorrow Never Comes”
Bonus tracks
16. Aerial, “M – AASS”
17. Rachel’s, “Moscow is in the telephone”
18. Stars of the Lid, “Dungtitled (In A Major)”
19., 20. Jim O’Rourke, “Not Sport, Martial Art” & “Fuzzy Sun”
21. Cul de Sac, “This Is The Metal That Do Not Burn”
A Silver Mt Zion, “God Bless Our Dead Marines”
22. This Will Destroy You, “Threads”
23. Clogs, “Lantern”
24. Don Caballero, “Delivering the groceries at 138 bpm”
25. Explosions in the Sky, “Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean”
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*
p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. It’s less difficult vis-a-vis getting actually interesting films distributed here in France. There’s a solid network of cinemas and art spaces geared to that. But yes. With Zac’s and my new film, the plan is to initially roll the film out mostly through museum and art space screenings (plus certain festivals), which makes sense since that’s where we see a lot of the films we’re into. In the States, we learned from ‘PGL’ that there’s almost no way to get films like ours shown in actual cinemas. Even the seemingly adventurous theatres and chains really aren’t very adventurous at all. ** Dominik, Hi! Yeah, I wonder if I’ll ever know what the hacking is about. I just want it to stop, and it just isn’t giving up at all. Completely weird. Well, I really will believe it when I see it about the reopening here. This thing is completely unpredictable. So, so sorry about your new lockdown. Yuck. Ah, your love is into books, excellent. Love positioning himself in front of you and parting the Pandemic like Charleton Heston parted the Red Sea, i.e. thusly, but with a much, much better soundtrack, G. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, T. Good question. Certainly they are not physically doing the hacking since it hasn’t stopped for even a moment for over a week now. Big congrats and no small amount of envy: you getting the vaccine shot. How did the online interview go? As almost always with these US online things, they happen over here when I am dead asleep. ** Damien Ark, Hi. 11:11 is something else, yeah. Mike Carrao friended me on Facebook yesterday, so I guess I’ll find out if he’s truly an alien. AP is a helluva press too. Presses-wise, it’s a total embarrassment of riches these days. I’ll look for Mika’s book. Take care over there. ** Steve Erickson, Yep, 75 so far. But it’s supposed to come within my range ere too long. Me too, re: John, and you never know with him, but he seems pretty adamant that he’s finished with filmmaking, at least at the moment. ** Jack Skelley, We are, or, we were barrel makers indeed. Apparently. And people with the name Jack tend to jack off a lot. But your name is John, so I guess you just tend to go to the bathroom a lot? Yeah, I remember Napili Bay really well. My family stayed there at the Mauian for the entire summer three years in a row when I was 14, 15, and 16. I saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon on the TV in the Napili Kai rec room. I was there when I took LSD 24-hours a day for a month and had a gigantic mental breakdown that I don’t think I ever fully recovered from. So, yes. And, yes, re: the waves. One summer this actor who was very famous at the time, Anthony Franciosa, stayed there, and he was always strutting around on the beach showing off because he was so famous and everything, and one day he was wading in the water and a huge wave rose up and dragged him out to sea. They had to send divers to hunt for him, and they finally dragged his unconscious body onshore and revived him using mouth to mouth, and a huge crowd gathered, and it was so humiliating, and the crowd was laughing at him, and it was great. Did you ever go to the next cove over, just on the other side of the Napili Kai? I can’t remember its name. The waves there could go insane, thirty feet and more. But I’ll stop ‘cos I could blah blah about Napili forever. De-party. ** Mark Gluth, My pleasure, of course. Last I checked they seem to be raising a decent amount of funds. Hope they make their goal. ** Gus, Hey there, Gus! Good to see you, sir! People often tell me the blog is their waking up, coffee drinking company, and I like that for some reason. I’m glad you like Diarmuid’s book. I mostly do too, ha ha. Have you interviewed Elias already? My friend Zac and I hung out with him a bit one time in Paris, and I thought he was a super great guy. That journals story makes sense. When we were with him, he read out part of a short story that he was writing on his phone, and it was really good. Ha ha, Cubby Branch lives! Nice! Thank you for co-opting him. With a name like that, he deserves a bigger life. ‘Sister’ is my favourite SY album, which I think is why Thurston asked me to write those liner notes. I’m excited to read your story. Very cool! I’ll do that after I finish this. Oh, wait, and your other piece too. Bonanza. Everyone, Get your clicking fingers ready because Gus, fine writer and music artist who’s also part of the great and highly recommended music group/project California Girls, has two things that can be read — first a story starring the infamous Cubby Branch here, and, second, a short fiction piece … and here I quote … ‘which came out of this really awful workshop I did about making performance work out of these early sociological manuscripts about cruising but it became this bigger thing thinking about a failure to transcend in life and this obsession I have with Yukio Mishima’, here. Thanks a lot. I’m fending off the madness as best I can, and, if you’re amidst any madness, I hope it either backs off you or feeds your art. Take care. ** Misanthrope, Thank you. I would live in an amusement so fast it would make your head spin so fast. Get through the week fully. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. All I can say, as someone who avoids Twitter at almost all costs, is I hope your day away lasts a day at least. Mental health should be prioritised. My Monday … I promised to give something to this upcoming anthology, so I started to figure out what I could give. I watched a fun documentary called ‘Class Action Park’ about the late, extremely dangerous New Jersey water park Action Park. And … not a ton else. Today … I might talk to the producer guy about the new film’s budget and/or see a friend for a coffee and a walkabout. Yours? Did you manage to avoid Twitting and being Twitted at, for instance? ** John Newton, Hi, John. You sound like you’ve got your obsessions sorted, good. Ithink mine are sufficiently corralled maybe too. No, DMT started being easily available just at the time I stopped doing drugs. I just missed it. I was never particularly drawn to do it. It always sounded a bit too heavy and laborious in my friends’ recountings. I took A LOT of LSD. I just mentioned to Jack up above about taking LSD 24-hours a day for a month. I couldn’t really count the number of times. I was very into LSD for quite a while. It took two very serious mental breakdowns from very, very bad trips before I finally swore it off. Phantasialand in Germany is one of my two favorite amusement parks in the world, and I’ve been to a lot of amusement parks, so that’s saying something. It and Efteling in Holland are my favorites. Otherwise, in Germany, EuropaPark is a very good park. And Tripsdrill is a smaller park, but excellent. All of them are in the western part of Germany. All highly recommended if you get over to these parts. ** Okay. Today I’m restoring another old guest-post by the legendary and much missed d.l. The Dreadful Flying Glove. It’s lovely. Check it out. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
@ TDFG, this is a great post and you are indeed sorely missed.
Life here at the hospital is still much the same. Reason I’ve not been so present on the blog lately is that the NHS WiFi blocks this site and I’m only commenting now by sheer cosmic chance. If my mobility improves I will get myself to the day room where 4G reception is good in one of the corners. For now the agenda is still lots of daytime TV and Harry/Meghan related royal gossip. Here’s hoping the day room awaits soon!
Dennis, Another blast from the past!
Thanks. I’ll try, hahaha. I’m embarking on a 113-page document today. Might be the last huge one for a while. Funny thing about most of these things I do is that people don’t really use them much anymore. Everyone uses TurboTax these days, and the big corporations have tax lawyers from Yale and Harvard and such places who know the tax law inside and out without having to consult these things. They’re really only used by revenue agents within the department who help taxpayers face to face. But I’m not pointing that out to anyone, hehehe.
Then again, they know. Still has to be done, this work.
Kayla’s been sending me some pics from Disney World. She’s having a swell time so far. That’s a good thing.
The other kid here, I don’t know, hahaha. Lost his gas cap to his car the other day. Filled up and just forgot to put it back on and drove up. My mom went and bought him a new one. It was cheap, but still…
Hi!!
Yeah, I just wanted to say this. That I don’t understand what their goal is by getting into your blog. I’m very, very far from being even remotely familiar with such things, though.
I keep my fingers VERY crossed for the reopening over there! And, well, I keep my fingers crossed for the situation here too.
Haha, I can’t tell your love how grateful I am! The bit about the better soundtrack is deeply appreciated too, hah! Love dressing up as a huge bird and attempting to fly through your window from the roof of the nearest building, Od.
Merci Monsieur Glove. Tres interresant.
Not surprised tat things cinematic are more copasetic in France. Like your plan for the next Dennis-Zac spectacular.
The good mood that “Celine and Julie Go Boating” put me in has been shattered by the news that a very dear firend has contracted both Covid and Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He’s in hospital and quite non compis mentis. It’s only a matter of time. Lost many friends to AIDS so this is not ew but the hurt of loss is always the same.
It was very odd to go out of the house to get the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine one-shot. I had to go to a CVS in Hollywood to get the shot. Being in a car for the first time in a year and traveling down Santa Monica Blvd almost gave me a vertigo feeling. It was kind of a shock to see what stores were open or closed due to the virus as well as the feeling of traveling in a ghost town. The past 12-months I have been mostly inside my home or taking a walk down my residential street. Criterion Channel and my records are my real home these days. This year has been the worse, but at the same time also the most interesting as well.
Hello Dennis!
Poking my head round the door to say hello and how have things been? I read about the hacking bot, and would like to add myself to the willing circle that it promptly desists and goes off to die somewhere far away, must be immensely stressful.
Last week was a bit of a blur, my housemates and I had to move house on a few days notice, so the time I would have spent reading/commenting was wrested away trying to organise all that shit. The upside of that is our landlord said we didn’t need to pay rent til the summer to compensate for the inconvenience, so I’m relatively flush and thus ordered the Rikki Ducornet and Susana Thenon that you profiled yesterday. The Big Bruiser Dope Boy was also hugely enticing, the extract made me grin like a lockjawed maniac on the bus into work, but I wanna try and find a uk outlet that’s not am*zon which might link me up with a copy. This is a direct contravention of the resolution I made not to buy any new books before i’ve finished ones I already have, but hey, otherwise that rent money would just be sitting stagnant given the lack of other prospect at the moment. I’m currently struggling to the end of ‘crime and punishment’ which has been sitting for years in a pile of books i’ve somehow accumulated, but it’s not speaking to me in the slightest. I’m doing an evening class at the moment to learn Russian, would really like to travel to Moscow and beyond once all this is over and get into stuff that’s more contemporary, I feel like there must be loads of cool and crazy stuff that I’m not wise to. Do you have any Russian authors/artists you are/have been into?
Anyway – going to listen to some post-rock as I drift off to sleep as soon as I’ve finished here, thanks to the Dreadful Flying Glove if they’re reading!
See you next time,
T
Those post rock times were good times!
I love (d) that stuff and the blog post.
Sending good wishes to Paris,
Uli
The wider availability of DMT seems tied to the Internet. It used to be a dark and mysterious chemical, now it takes 30 seconds to learn that you can make it by mixing some leaf or bark with 2 chemicals, all of which are legal and easy to order. (I reviewed the drifter-off-the-grid film A SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME for the Nashville Scene later this week, which shows its subject distilling DMT from mimosa shrubs and toad venom and closes with his trip.)
In the meantime, here’s my review of the lame Netflix thriller…satire?…whatever I CARE A LOT: https://www.gaycitynews.com/lesbian-thriller-i-care-a-lot-lacks-sharpness/
After 2 rough days, my back pain seems to be improving. I hope the trajectory swings upward from here.
Dennis — I could rave shorthand eons about this tuneage (most new to me) and Flying Glove’s insights/terms. I’ll restrict to Miles’ “He Loved Him Madly,” ‘cause I worship it. It is indeed a dirgy, scaggy elongation of a funeral march, as if a New Orleans Second Line were trudging Jupiter’s multiple G-forces. The Get Up With It album is Miles most drugged before finally cleaning-up. The full version (not this clip) is 30 minutes. The middle part settles into a (sluggish) rhythm before re-disintegrating. Miles (and producer Teo Macero) always influenced – including with these pre-digital cut-ups – but no artist could replicate this. Oh, shit. Ran out of room to talk Napili Bay. Your incredible stories! I know that game room! (The place still has a Mid-Century vibe. We were last there 3 years ago.) Yes, I’ve been the next cove over. I wiped-out in swim fins and panicked. It’s gorgeous. Wanna hear more about the trips (you just provided John Newton some). Can I put your Tony Franciosa tale in Fear of Kathy Acker Volume 2 – Maui Edition? I’ll credit you!!
Hey Dennis, it looks like Dalibor reached and exceeded his goal which warms my heart, knowing how many people came together. Of course now we have to hope the process or whatever works for him. I have hopes the Biden administration’s general softening of Trumps policies will play in his favor. Fingers crossed. Again, thanks so much for sharing the link.
Not much new on our end. Erin qualifies for the vaccine in 2 weeks which is nice and will make her life less stressful. Spring is here, and I’m kinda into the light and birds and green stuff more than I ever have been. You seem well, productive, etc…? Oh Jim Greer texted me semi randomly the other day. He has a new book he wrote. I just looked at a little of it but it seem great. He uses images in it like in a Sebald way.
Hey, Dennis,
A tip of the hat to The Dreadful Flying Glove for this curious, fascinating, indeed truly lovely post; it made for great Tuesday reading and listening. “Class Action Park”, that’s an amusing title. I’ve never heard of it, or the water park itself. Sounds interesting. I presume it has your recommendation? Hope your meeting with producer guy and/or your friend went well, if either occurrence manifested. I spent my day watching and responding to “All About Eve” for one of my film classes. I’d been looking forward to seeing it for a while and it did not disappoint. Any thoughts if you’ve seen it? Yes, I have officially avoided Twitter for a full day now. I think I shall stay off on Wednesday, too, and then return on Thursday. I find that I’m perfectly fine without it; really, I could drop it entirely, I think. The only thing that keeps me there, and that has me returning soon, is the few friends I’ve made on the site that I can’t contact anywhere else. There’s a handful of writers, film critics, and gay British boys on there who I really feel rather attached to, and I miss talking to them. If they were elsewhere on the Internet then I might give up Twitter completely, but as it is, I’m going to stay for now. But I think I will change my approach a little. Anywho, there’s my meaningless Tuesday spiel. I hope yours was more interesting!
Dennis, That sounds super intense! I only took acid 11X but this was spaced out from ages 16-20. I stopped taking LSD in the early 2000s when research chemicals which are not LSD started showing up being sold as acid on blotter, windowpane/geltabs, liquid, microdots, etc. Also it became more difficult to find and much, much more expensive and at a lower dose. Mushrooms were easier to find, and I had a period where I was taking acid daily, and I did not really fully come down for half a year. I was still able to function, as I was a fulltime university student and working; but the visual static/trails, and breathing walls, and flashes of lavender light were annoying in florlescent light, and would get worse if I had not slept well. They completely went away when I stopped using everything including alcohol and pot. I never had a bad trip; but I know people who did on DMT, Ayahuasca, DXM, Ketamine, angel dust/PCP, and on too many mushrooms or too much acid. What happened during your bad trips? Are you OK mentally from it? What were the after-effects of taking that much LSD in a month? The first time I took LSD it was super strong, dosed very high, and I remember losing the ability to speak or hear on it, and myself and a girl I knew who gave it to me both had out of body experiences on it I was in my room at my parents’ house and she was in her car at night but thankfully she was not driving-or basically we saw ourselves from above temporarily. But everyone I know who took these black geltabs or windowpane gelatin acid said how they were the strongest LSD they have ever had in a single dose. I thought all LSD was this super strong, so I did not take it again until I was an adult and had experience with mushrooms.
What are your obsessions? Thanks for the information on the central and western European amusement parks.
I like mogwai, stereolab, Miles Davis, and beach house.
Also what, if anything did you learn about human existence/spirituality, etc. from all of those LSD experiences?
Breadcrumb Trail [Full Doc]
https://youtu.be/GsRpS6XGiOs