Post-rock is a done-to-death descrip­tion but as a sem­a­phore of intent it still serves a cer­tain pur­pose. First coined by music-journo Simon Reynolds as a term to describe pro­gres­sive music “using rock instru­men­ta­tion for non-rock pur­pos­es, using gui­tars as facil­i­ta­tors of tim­bre and tex­tures rather than riffs and pow­er chords”, its use was rapid­ly spread dur­ing the 90s by breath­less writ­ers sud­den­ly over­whelmed by seem­ing­ly-infi­nite pos­si­ble music-futures. Reynolds fur­ther expound­ed:

per­haps the real­ly provoca­tive area for future devel­op­ment lies… in cyborg rock; not the whole­heart­ed embrace of Tech­no’s method­ol­o­gy, but some kind of inter­face between real time, hands-on play­ing and the use of dig­i­tal effects and enhance­ment.


… which in itself has turned out to be suit­ably ambi­tious, as in gen­er­al attempts at an amal­gam of real-time instru­men­ta­tion and dig­i­tal frip­pery have turned out to be a big hor­ri­ble mess (with notable excep­tions, of course).

How­ev­er some have man­aged to find a kin­da cau­tious way-for­ward through this exper­i­men­tal mine­field, and on Sat­ur­day night four pro­gres­sive musi­cal groups take four indi­vid­ual post-rockin’ approach­es to decon­struct­ing sound with­in the cod­i­fied meta-lan­guage of rock music:

…some of Welling­ton’s great­est rock explor­ers…

The Pos­tures will have you shakin’ yer booty and shak­ing in your boots with their disco/doom rhythms com­bined with pierc­ing tones and a punk deliv­ery. The Stumps are quite pos­si­bly the Grate­ful Dead for the 21st cen­tu­ry… nox­ious jazz-fusion is admin­is­tered a good spank­ing to with­in an inch of the (cur­rent) law. Join The Dukes of Leisure on an idler’s stroll through huge spaces of gen­tle melodies sur­round­ed by walls of vio­lent and engulf­ing noise. And Black Boned Angel is über-ambi­ent doom-met­al cre­at­ed from mas­sive­ly over­driv­en instru­ments… the aur­al equiv­a­lent of a tequi­la and opi­ates-ben­der fol­lowed by a five-day cry­ing jag.

SATURDAY APRIL 14th
SAN FRANCISCO BATH-HOUSE
10$

The last Black Boned Angel per­for­mance: