The origins of post-rock are nebulous, but the aesthetic is more exact: airy instrumentals that found that common ground between the industrial fuzz of musique concrete, the ambience of pre-fusion, late-60s jazz (think In a Silent Way), and the straight lines of ‘80s math rock. When it came out, it felt like a rejection of the scenestery, overly emotive indie rock of the ‘90s, and a path forward for rock, which felt like it had been treading water in the shallow end of ‘60s-inspired nostalgia. It got real boring really quickly, but it sounded glorious at the time. Garrett Kamps, in his write-up for Stereogum, doesn’t try to capture the cannon, but rather a personal reflection of what he remembers to be the best tracks from this now-maligned subgenre.
