Pan: "Post-Rock Is Not Dead"

 Local Columbia, SC post-rock tour de force Pan have clapped eager ears with their ongoing energetic touring and 2011 release of Post-Rock Is Not Dead, a strikingly balanced album replete with danceable tunes exemplified by songs like "Seeking (The Sea King)." While sections of Post-Rock Is Not Dead may inspire you to "wipe your feet really good on the rhythm rug," the album seamlessly integrates a spacious, experimentally bent momentum that listeners could enjoy in the darkness of their bedrooms. Fortunately, I have been lucky enough for Ian Flegas, guitarist of Pan, to agree to an interview which will be held in the coming week.

Here is a link to Pan's bandcamp.
Below is "Seeking (The Sea King) from Pan's 2011 release "Post-Rock Is Not Dead"

"The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes": A Silver Mt. Zion's Political Activism

 

Musicians often engage in political discourse through both explicit and more subtle means. Lyrics, interviews, and album art directly express a band's political message. Meanwhile, song structures, sampled voice inserts, file sharing policies, ticket prices, and press choices manifest implicit clues concerning a band's intended social impact. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's political activism works on a more suggestive than outspoken level through the use of provocative voice inserts, low ticket prices, avoidance of merchandising, select press interviews, and open recording and file sharing policies for fans. As a result, Godspeed members Efrim Menuck, Sophie Trudeau, and Thierry Amar formed A Silver Mt. Zion near the beginning of America's war in Iraq in 1999 to initiate social and political discussions more casually.

Here is an interview with Efrim Menuck detailing his goals with A Silver Mt. Zion:

A Silver Mt. Zion's songs such as "God Bless Our Dead Marines" and "Mountains Made Of Steam" utilize lyrics, such as "when the world is sick can't no one be well," to candidly critique war and the socially reinforced solipsism which enables its perpetuation. Though A Silver Mt. Zion often delivers its political messages explicitly, the band simultaneously implements more subtle rhetorical strategies to communicate their intentions.

A poignant example of A Silver Mt. Zion's implied political commentary can be found in the song "The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes." The song's structural melodic components and harmonies are inspired by a popular Spanish anarchist tune titled "A Las Barricadas" sung during the Spanish Civil War. The original song "A Las Barricadas" chants "To the barricades! For the triumph of the Confederation." A Silver Mt. Zion's "The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes" lyrics include, "So come on friends, to the barricades again" and "musicians are cowards." By referencing a Spanish anarchist song, A Silver Mt. Zion injects another layer of meaning to their artistic work and situates their political voice within the sphere of historical protest music. A Silver Mt. Zion's allusion to Spanish anarchism extends their musical world and simultaneously insists for political action on both the listener's and musician's behalf. The lyrics saying "musicians are cowards" may be self-referential and if so, the statement suggests that both artist and audience must act upon their political leanings because creating and listening to politically provocative music simply isn't enough.

Here is a video of "A Las Barricadas"-

Here is a video of A Silver Mt. Zion's "The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes"-

Who Gets To Call It Rock?

Attention to minute instrumentation details has interchangeably bled through post-rock, math rock, black metal, and post-dubstep. Post-rock acts like Tortoise share a clean, bright instrumental tone with their math rock siblings such as This Town Needs Guns. Meanwhile, contemporary post-rock acts that use vocals such as Mogwai further blur these genre distinctions when math-rockers Hella often stray farther beyond generic rock devices. Similarly, At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta maestro Omar Rodriguez-Lopez delivers his music in an unconventional manner whereby guitars needle through feedback, drums resonate like mosquito wings in your ear, bass lines carry Cuban undertones, and surrealist pianos lumber through organ stabs fluctuating parallel to vocal crescendos. Mars Volta vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala has described his vocal style as "painting with sound," a statement reminiscent of Sigur Ros' "Hopelandic" vocal style.

The Mars Volta is famous for its live performances, which often dismantle rock tropes to the extent that the music's waveform resembles a Rorschach test. Sound engineering slices up spoken voice inserts, implants shreds of songs previously recorded throughout the show, interlaces Latin structures, and entombs blaring saxophones in tunnels of aural pulse. One of The Mars Volta's most famous live recordings is posted below from their album "Scabdates" which ended in a continuous improvisation that straddled the 40 minute mark.

 

As live performances continue to experiment with their conditions of possibility, genres may feed into one another, allowing for more flexibility and dialogue between musical worlds. Radiohead's "Kid A" exemplifies a band's nuanced acculturation to the digital technologies allowed them. With the development of new recording techniques and live instruments, progressive rock acts may more closely resemble their post-rock and ambient siblings.  

Ben Frost: Ambient Soundscape Explorer

Ben Frost, post-minimalist composer and ambient prodigy has spread his tendrils through numerous genres and projects, dwelling in the shadows and borders of intersecting "musical worlds." Though Frost's 2007 hard-core ambient masterpiece Theory of Machines, which can be found here: Ben Frost- "Theory of Machines" bandcamp, introduced him to the electronic spotlight, his early compositions align more with the post-rock genre. Performances of Frost's solo work were delivered by his live band "School of Emotional Engineering" from 2002-2005.
Ben Frost's "Theory of Machines"-

 School of Emotional Engineering- "She Dreams In Car Crashes"-

Frost's early connection with post-rock's wide spaces of tonal harmonies informs his ambient work where pastures of white noise collide to reveal uncharacteristic components of the ambient genre. Drums beat mercilessly through pulsing soundscapes resembling Trent Reznor pillaging through the pre-industrial wilderness. Frost's 2009 release By The Throat tears through typical ambient predispositions. This is not relaxing. You can not sleep to this music without turning over at least once. Instead, the listener has entered an aural geography that is inhospitable, cold, trembling with animal howls. By The Throat is "red in tooth and claw." It is no surprise that Ben Frost created this album while living in Iceland. The music bleeds the landscape it was formed in. The song "The Carpathians" couldn't be a better exposition of the influence Ben Frost's environment has had on his music.

Here is a link where Frost describes Iceland's effect on his musical thrust: Ben Frost and The Icelandic Allure

World-renowned pillar of ambient, post-minimalist, and electronic music, Brian Eno hand-selected Ben Frost as his protege for 2010-2011's mentor for The Rolex Mentor and Protege Initiative. The program funds the mentor and protege to collaborate and guide one another in their artistic endeavors. Frost's performance at New York's Unsound Festival in April 2011 was paired with Eno's film projections based on the 1972 movie Solaris.  With recent 2011 collaborations alongside Colin Stetson and Tim Hecker, Frost's further explorations may prove to us yet again, that the ambient earth is far from flat.

Glossolalia and the "Hopelandic" Language of Sigur Ros

 

Post-rock as a genre often wrestles with its relationship to vocals. Bands such as This Will Destroy You and Do Make Say Think exclude vocals almost entirely, while other post-rock acts such as Mogwai use lyrics and vocals as an integral component of the music. The Icelandic band Sigur Ros implements a strikingly unconventional approach to vocals: glossolalia. Defined commonly as "speaking in tongues," glossolalia is a fluid vocalization of nonsensical syllables, gibberish. Strangely enough, glossolalia is practiced by both the schizophrenic and the religiously devout. To many Christian followers, glossolalia is an expression of the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, psychologists have recorded the phenomenon of glossolalia as a characteristic trait of schizophrenic patients. A fascinating article surrounding glossolalia can be found here: Glossolalia- Speaking In Tongues Article 

Sigur Ros' artistic choice to sing with glossolalia simultaneously amplifies their music's indeterminacy while providing a vocal cue for listener appeal.

Sigur Ros' 2002 release "( )" is exclusively characterized by vocalized glossolalia, which the band terms "hopelandic." On their website's "frequently asked questions" section (which can be found here: Sigur Ros' Frequently Asked Questions Section), "hopelandic" is described as "the 'invented language' in which Jónsi sings before lyrics are written to the vocals." That being said, the band uses glossolalia in its early writing stages before actual words enter the music. The vocals act as another instrument, bridging the depersonalized gap often characteristic of voiceless music such as Explosions In The Sky's early work.
 
For a band already bilingual, sharing both Icelandic and English lyrics, Sigur Ros' "hopelandic" enables audiences of all languages to access the same degree of "meaning." For English-speaking listeners, "hopelandic" is more than gibberish; it is both a compromise and a tool. After listening to an album like "( )" that features only glossolalia, a future listening experience of a language beyond one's knowledge becomes somehow more beautiful. The foreign words take less precedence and the listener absorbs the vocals in terms of its musical qualities versus its morphemic meaning. Sigur Ros' glossolalia, though nonsensical, provides monolingual listeners with experiential practice to later formulate meaning out of a foreign language, whether that be Icelandic or English. In effect, the glossolalia in Sigur Ros' music functions as it does for its schizophrenic and religious speakers: a medium through which the individual interprets the void.

Authenticity and "The Real": Four Tet's Remixes and Mash-ups

 The post-rock genre's emphasis on instrumentation has become the subject of various remixes and mashups. The electronic artist Kieran Hebden's project Four Tet ranks among the most notable post-rock re-inventors. Hebden himself belonged to an English post-rock band called Fridge up until his full conversion to the electronic world as Four Tet in 1999. The results have been incredible. Four Tet's remixes of Explosions In The Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor blend electronic, post-dubstep, and post-rock genre boundaries, delving in a seamless alchemy between "the popular" and "alternative."

As a listener of post-rock music, I have found myself averting my eyes from bands that sound "too plastic," as if digital and electronically produced music was somehow less "real." This may be a suitable moment to consider Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation". What makes music authentic? Is the post-rock genre grounded in the subtle disposition that it must be directly performed from finger to string in order for it to be considered categorically valuable? If we are to discount the "imitation" of the real, then we must unhinge the fundamental underpinnings of minimalist music. The repetition inherent in minimalism functions as a synthetic work built from the layered and interconnected simulacra of musical phrases. The work is woven by minute relationships, each recurrent pulse abstracted from its original source.

Four Tet's remix of Explosions In The Sky's "Catastrophe and the Cure" introduces more electronic elements into the post-rock recipe, while still placing the characteristic emphasis on voiceless instrumentation.

 On a different musical note, Four Tet's mash-up of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Sleep" with Nas' "It Ain't Hard To Tell" breaks the "unspoken rules" of the post-rock genre. Godspeed is given a voice it has so long been missing. Four Tet's mash-up not only unifies two definitive musical acts from their respective genres, but essentially mixes both wines of the post-rock and rap holy grails. "Lift Your Skinny Fists..." and "Illmatic" are widely considered the pinnacles of their musical spheres and Four Tet's acute artistic choices hybridize two unlike genres with mutual respect.

Visual Communication In Music's Digital Age

Most of us remember opening up a CD, vinyl record, or cassette tape, turning on the music and staring at the cover, the liner notes, and the photos inside the album's packaging. In recent years, music downloads have displaced the purchase of physical copies, thereby compromising the role of visual communication in the musical consumption of products. A contextualizing blog article concerning how digital music consumption has changed over the last thirty years can be found here: Digital Fish blog. On the other hand, music videos have become increasingly more accessible for fans to receive visual stimuli from bands. Though the music video provides a more sensory resplendent avenue for listeners, it can potentially fail to establish ambiguity or listener agency of interpretation. Album art can staple a provocative image on the liner notes while maintaining its indeterminacy. Examples of this visual ambiguity can be found in the molotov cocktail pressed on the backside of Godspeed You Black Emperor's "Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada" compact disc packaging. 
The back of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada"-

As a note, album artwork can detail the band's relationship to visual artists in a similar way that music videos detail the relationship with a film director. Who could imagine The Velvet Underground without Andy Warhol's famous banana? 
The Andy Warhol banana that became the cover art for The Velvet Underground's debut album-

Oftentimes, watching a music video is like watching a movie based on a book you've already read, the images and the characters you had in your head to start with are then replaced by the film's and you become frustrated that you can't have your own images back. The film has somehow given you a stimuli and robbed you of your own intellectual property. 

Furthermore, album covers and liner notes establish a comprehensive message that could potentially be applied to the album as a whole. The music video works almost exclusively on an individual song basis. Thus, it appears probable that the listener's shift from listening to complete albums in their entirety to single songs at a time may result as a by-product of the visual departure from album art to music videos. 

What might this shift mean for post-rock which relies heavily upon creating a musical atmosphere versus delivering hit-singles? How should this characteristically wordless genre compensate to communicate an indeterminate message when music videos often require the viewer to forfeit their own preceding mental interpretations?