Talk Talk's second experimental work completely outside of the pop realm, Laughing Stock is the band's crowning achievement. An impressionistic blend of 1950s Miles Davis and MJQ jazziness and gauzy, baroque English rock this became one of those LPs that was only bought by people who now create music influenced by it. Beautiful and unique.
England's Bark Psychosis were one of the first to be considered "post-rock." The band's 1994 album Hex was partially recorded in Stratford's St. John's Church, and it's about as majestic and enigmatic as those surroundings. Though its cast of instruments is substantial -- samples, keyboards, melodica, Hammond, vibraphone, flute, trumpet, djembe, violin, cello -- this seamless set comes off with minimalist ease. The few hushed vocals sound like they come from a ragged rocker too tortured to howl, but the real beauty is in the fluid and vivid instrumentation that sparkles like stained glass.
Stereolab had made brilliant songs before, but this was their first brilliant album. Released in 1993, the group was able to balance its mixture of droning noise, discreet melodies, and sound manipulation. The album made digestible Krautrock out of indie art-pop in a way that truly was innovative. Every track is fantastic, but "Jenny Ondioline" is unbelievably good.
Who needs vocals? From the krautrock/dub/vibraphone onslaught of "Djed" and the punk-jazz fusion of "The Taut and Tame" to the noir shuffle of "Along the Banks of Rivers," this 1996 LP helped push the boundaries of indie rock in the '90s. If there ever was an album that made it seem like anything's possible, this is it.
Released in 1997, Mogwai's debut synthesized the hard rock bombast of Black Sabbath and the wide-eyed surrealism of shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. This 10th anniversary re-issue features a second disc of live cuts, including a 10-plus minute version of famed concert scorcher "Mogwai Fear Satan," as well as four rarities, the best being the sickly sweet "Honey."
Slint's second album, 1991's Spiderland, is quite possibly the most chilling record you'll ever hear, cold enough to freeze moments of your life like so many empty bubbles trapped in ice. Slint songs spool out yards of slack to hang yourself with, using long, tense tempo builds, maundering vocals and half-nodding guitars to set an uneasy half-dreaming/half-awake mood. It has the effect of leaving ample blank space to paint your own fears into. Taut, minimalist songs like "Don, a Man" list precariously alongside epic hallucinations like "Breadcrumb Trail" and "Good Morning, Captain."
Although originally composed as the score for a Chicago stage play about the titular painter, Music for Egon Schiele stands on its own as a pensive, evocative album. Playful in parts, with skipping violins and dancing piano lines, it's also plenty brooding in others, especially on "Egon & Wally Embrace...," a heart wrenching, essential piece of indie chamber music.
For its third album, this Chicago group found a fluidity it was able to maintain over the course of the entire record. Sam Prekop's smooth vocals, John McEntire's choppy, precise drumming, and Archer Prewitt's ringing guitar made this LP one of the key releases of the so-called "post-rock" influx of the mid-1990s.
While they may not have cared for the term "post-rock," GY!BE certainly exemplified it. On this two-song, 27-minute "EP" you'll hear rock's usual guitar-bass-drums distorto-thrum, but it's employed -- along with about two dozen other instruments (strings, chimes, horns, samples, etc.) -- to create a massive, undulating sea of sound. Instead of verses and choruses, we get one long crescendo; instead of lyrics, a field recording of a libertarian "poet" tearing into "the government." Like a two-act play, the drama builds and builds, finally exploding into coruscating cacophony.
This Virginia trio's third album was released in 1996. Largely percussive-free, the group creates amorphous, echo-heavy backdrops that are great for nodding off into oblivion. The vocals are whispered and buried down deep in the mix, while the heavy narcoleptic drones barely keep themselves propped up. Epic, minimalist music.
Like their fellow Texans Explosions in the Sky, the instrumentalists in This Will Destroy You are never in a hurry. They layer their riffs slowly and confidently, creating patchworks of delayed arpeggios, reverberating chords and plodding bass lines, kept in line by steady, languorous drums. Songs take shape amid beds of whirring static, emerging piecemeal, one note at a time, until the party -- better make that a wake -- is in full swing.
This 1996 album overloads on surf guitar explorations that drift into the atmosphere before returning down to Earth again. Led by Glenn Jones' guitar work, which falls in-between that of Dick Dale, John Fahey and Tom Verlaine, the group delves into psychedelic Krautrock jams and unearthly beauty -- check out the closing track, "Utopia Pkwy."
This first full-length effort from Tortoise bassist, Doug McCombs is a wonderful, rumbling essay of fluid melodies and sparse, drifting atmosphere. Though there is much help provided musically, this is McComb's show the whole way, nimbly performing tracks like "The Field Code" and "Another Routine Day Breaks" with grace.
Trans Am are either predating a world that could accept Andrew W.K. into the mainstream or just rehashing old records by Chrome, Kraftwerk and This Heat. The metal riffs are out in force on this 1999 LP, but so are the vocoders and the synths. There is irony here, but the album parties so hard it doesn't matter.
If for some strange reason you've been listening to raging death metal all day and require the complete and total antithesis to prevent you from killing someone, well we've got an Album Leaf for you. For his third LP, main man Jimmy LaValle throws some formerly absent vocals onto a few tracks, although for the most part it's business as usual: lithe, languid instrumentals, 72-degree post-rock relaxation music with enough indie smarts to make it more than just the musical equivalent of those videos of fish.
For their first full-length in three years, Mono opens with the nearly 12-minute "Ashes in the Snow," one of the group's most dramatic, as well as cinematic, pieces to date. That's really saying something, considering Mono has churned out more than their fair share of neo-classical post-rock soundscapes over the course of their career. The rest of Hymn to the Immortal Wind -- six tracks, with only one failing to break the six-minute mark -- more than lives up to the promise of that first track. Epic stuff for sure.
The master craftsmen of avant-metal instrumentation shorten up their usual epics and tighten their massive tonnage of riffs on City of Echoes. Playing their instruments like a Jenga game, Pelican strategically stack every note and beat. Juxtaposing thick, visceral guitars with gentle fingerpicking, they never let their amplified tower of sound topple over into a heap of discordance. While sustaining their thick-skinned intensity with powerhouse tracks "Bliss in Concrete" and "Dead Between the Walls," they press slow-mo for "A Delicate Sense of Balance" and the acoustic "With the Hands."
This Portland outfit is mostly a two-man operation, yet they could blow away an orchestra. Like Mogwai, Glowworm create an atmosphere fraught with foreboding elegance; chilled ambient drones melt into hot guitar licks and languid strings that seem to curl upon impact. "Everything's going so fast" are the few words spoken in "Contrails," and so, Glowworm proceed with caution, patiently topping haunting, minimal electronica with shredding guitars and surging beats that'll have you running for your life.
