With Sound Intentions

  "As if from a distance" is intended to provide exposure and commentary concerning the post-rock, ambient, minimalist, and post-minimalist music genres specifically, but more widely, the blog attempts to focus on bands with a do-it-yourself aesthetic. These genres often converge, intersect, and blur into other genres such as lo-fi, punk, classical, and post-dubstep. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the focal inspiration for this blog's creation, exemplifies the blending of these musical genres while "synthesizing" a unique body of work. The post-rock, ambient, and post-minimalism genres extend beyond our casual predispositions of musical structure, consumption, promotion, and "world." Though often wordless, the music, in Nico Muhly’s terms, “Speaks Volumes” about the human experience and its myriad faces. While Godspeed You! Black Emperor questions the commodification of music reviews and journalism, the band appears to encourage a more D.I.Y., user-generated approach through their openness to fan videotaping at shows, performances at small venues, and general sincerity.

            I aim to examine the post-rock, ambient, and post-minimalist genres in order to give words to the wordless, to provide a window for the music’s accessibility to beginning listeners or the inquiring. Due to the highly personal nature of instrumentation-centered music, the blog will try to share this internal experience and contribute to an ongoing dialogue about music, its boundaries, and its explorations. I hope to uncover intersubjective relationships between artists, genres, and their audiences. The blog will include album reviews, discussions about live shows, interviews, music news, collaborations, academic perspectives, and theoretical applications.

            I have been an avid listener of the post-rock genre for several years and have spent countless nights pressing my ear to the speakers while plastered to my bed or outside beneath yellow streetlights in Columbia, SC. I’ve seen several live shows at venues around the South Eastern US and in the Northeast as well. Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion have been the soundtrack to my life for the past year, helping me cope with my friends’ deaths and my mother’s illness. I owe post-rock, ambient, and post-minimalism for the emotional support and the inspiration to become a vegan, which is a major part of my lifestyle. My goal is that other people use this blog for music suggestions and insight to carry with them in this great wide suffering world imbued with hope and beauty. These are things I love and I want to share them with you.