Harder Shade of Dark: Bristol Post-Rock

Aside from being vaguely familiar with Hood and Flying Saucer Attack, I knew nothing about Bristol post-rock. And Im still not sure if its a "real" thing, but the music is quite beautiful. It has all the dreamy textures and ethereal melodies of Sigur Rós, and the shifting, odd tempos of the Chicago scene, but it also sounds fairly dreary in parts, which is a nice touch. Pitchforks Nick Neyland provides an overview:

A group of interconnected musicians traced a filmy circle of darkness around the English city of Bristol during the late 1990s and early 2000s, forming a significant post-rock outpost. They often appeared on each other’s records, started short-lived projects together, and assembled brittle home-recording setups that provided a lo-fi flipside to the city’s trip-hop forerunners.

As a side not, Pitchforks "Essentials" series continues to impress. Their subjects (such as last weeks melodic IDM) continue to be both very idiosyncratic yet strangely intuitive.