Post-Rock

Olympic Swimmers - No Flags Will Fly

Less than original but still worthwhile Scottish post-rock debut

31 May 2012

The fact Olympic Swimmers’ debut album arrives in a summer when their Google search rankings might not be the best isn’t their biggest hindrance to standing out. Situated between the pillars of Scottish alternative music – Idlewild’s shrewd melodies…

Sigur Rós - Valtari

A typically dazzling record from the Icelandic cosmic folk-pop outfit

22 May 2012

The rumours of an ‘indefinite hiatus’ might have left us thinking that was it for Sigur Rós, but the four years since their previous album have amounted to little more than a bit of creative refreshment time. Valtari (the infinitely less satisfying to…

RM Hubbert, Stereo, Glasgow, Fri 27 Jan

1 Mar 2012

The launch RM Hubbert's second album, 13 Lost and Found, is both a celebratory and elegiac affair. A punk and post-rock veteran, Hubbert turned to the classical guitar as a way of dealing with bereavement and depression. To perform his latest album with…

Human Don’t Be Angry - The Arches, Glasgow, Sat 25 Feb

Malcolm Middleton's side project gets a satisfying full-band outing

29 Feb 2012

For those who knew Malcolm Middleton only from his days as one half of the funniest band ever to be famous for misery, or even as the alt folk jangler behind ‘A Brighter Beat’ and one-time Christmas No 1 outsider ‘We’re All Going to Die’, this, the…

Explosions in The Sky - O2 Academy, Glasgow, Mon 23 Jan 2012

An elemental, foundation-shaking post-rock rollercoaster

3 Feb 2012

Explosions in The Sky’s music has always had very elemental feel to it. As the unforgiving Glasgow winter freezes the breath in every pair of lungs waiting to get into the Academy tonight, the Texan’s set, which could soundtrack the bleak, sparse cold…

Explosions in the Sky set for UK tour 2012

The post-rock icons return to Glasgow to tour latest album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

19 Dec 2011

There’s a long tradition of guitar bands scrabbling around trying to define the zeitgeist or whatever. Then there are the more restrained bands who quietly go about the business of being casually awesome. Explosions in the Sky fall into the latter…

Interview: Stuart Braithwaite deconstructs Mogwai

An examination of what makes them great, ahead of their 2011 UK tour

9 Dec 2011

40% Quiet/Loud ‘For our first few years this was our raison d’être’ says Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite of a technique that came to define the band’s early, and much revered, nerve-shredding sound. That jolt as the volume soared and dipped without warning…

Sigur Rós - Inni

Stunning live recording to accompany the Icelandic quartet's latest film release

12 Oct 2011

(Krunk) Sigur Rós’s effortlessly epic post-rock feels over-exposed these days, seemingly soundtracking every nature documentary of the last decade, but stripped of that banal association it still wields enormous emotional power, as demonstrated on…

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - A potted history

The post-rock deities set for 2011 UK tour

13 Jul 2011

One should never underestimate the power of the bagpipe. It played a key role, after all, in F# A# ∞ (F-sharp, A-sharp, Infinity) – the official debut from Canadian post-rock deities Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The anarchic, enigmatic (not to…

Interview - Munaf Rayani of Explosions in the Sky

Guitarist talks about band's last few years and where they're going next

11 May 2011

If you’re wondering what intervened and caused the long gap before Explosions in the Sky issued a follow-up to their remarkable 2007 album All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, life is the short answer. The Texan instrumental post-rock quartet’s fifth…

Explosions in the Sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Post-rock titans add a few subtle colours to their palette for fifth album

21 Mar 2011

(Bella Union) It’s been over a decade since this Texan post-rock foursome first formed through an advert – ‘Wanted: Sad triumphant rock band’ – and this fifth album sees them sticking to that definition while subtly expanding their sound. It’s…

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Post-rock legend's seventh album ventures further into experimental territory

26 Jan 2011

(Rock Action) Now on their seventh album, Mogwai could be forgiven for taking their feet off the pedal. They haven’t. But there is a feeling on Hardcore …, despite the occasional foray into the monolithic riffage of their early days, that the band…

Mogwai's seventh studio album radiates diversity and sense of purpose - interview

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will - 2011 tour dates

19 Jan 2011

As record titles go, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will provokes a pause. Utterly fatuous and perversely profound, it is the name of Mogwai’s seventh studio album since forming in Glasgow 15 years ago. But there’s no sense of finality here; rather…

Godspeed You! Black Emperor embark on UK and US tour

Montreal post-rock collective back from hiatus for tour and All Tomorrow's Parties slot

23 Nov 2010

When Montreal collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor played their second ever UK show in Edinburgh’s tiny Stills Gallery in November 1998, it was a suitably low-key setting for a fiercely private-minded group who, with the rise of pre-millennial…

Bill Wells and Stefan Schneider - Pianotapes

26 Oct 2010

(Karaoke Kalk) This second collaboration between Falkirk’s answer to Thelonious Monk and one third of German electronicists To Rococo Rot is a languid marriage between top of the range chamber piano sketches and low-end analogue equipment. Recorded…

Adam Pierce's Mice Parade bring post rock inventiveness to Glasgow

New York multi-instrumentalist takes live band on UK tour

6 Oct 2010

Adam Pierce is the Richard Whiteley of rock. The New Yorker is an anagram buff (Mice Parade, see?) who moonlights with palindromic musicians (múm) and bedecks his work with cryptic clues (his gladdening troupe’s new album is entitled What It Means To Be…

Mogwai - Special Moves/Burning

23 Aug 2010

(Rock Action) This live CD/DVD package bears one very real disadvantage. No matter how good the surround sound quality of your television or stereo, you’re never quite going to get close enough to the raw emotional power of this group at their live…

Kasper Rosa - EP2

7 Jul 2010

(Field Records) A cocktail of post-rock and prog rock is a deadly combination – not just for the ears, but for the mind too. Instrumental interludes conjoining with off-time deviances is tough stuff – but Kasper Rosa have got it right. ‘EP2’ opens…

Keser

GRV, Edinburgh, Fri 23 Oct

29 Oct 2009

There are three words which it will probably become a legal requirement to use in all reviews of this band: epic, soundscape, cinematic. There. Done. Another one, if we’re talking about the live Keser experience, is loud: the noise coming from these two…

Fuck Buttons

Avant-garde, post-rock, sweary sorts come to Glasgow

3 Sep 2009

Experimental electronica meets squalling fuzzy post-punk in the hands of the wonderfully monikered Brighton duo Fuck Buttons. Signed to ATP Recordings expect discordant synths, freaked-out vocals, slabs of drone rock and crashing waves of blissful…

Exposure: 85 Bears

22 Jun 2009

East London trio 85 Bears have been causing minor earthquakes as they tour round the country, as anyone who caught their Hinterland appearance in May will be able to testify. The instrumental band are a force to witness; the intricate interplay at heart…

Y'all is Fantasy Island - No Ceremony

11 Dec 2008

ALTERNATIVE POST-ROCK From the deepest darkest depths of Falkirk (and Glasgow), singer-songwriter Adam Stafford and his fine band of musicians unleash their third excellent, self-financed album. Marking a significant change of direction (actually…

Red Sparowes

3 Jul 2008

Los Angeles post-rockers Red Sparowes have supported the likes of Dilllinger Escape Plan and feature members of Isis, Halifax Pier and Angel Hair. They plough a deliberately experimental furrow of epic ambient rock, but distinguish themselves form the…

Iglomat - Iglomat

19 Jun 2008

ELECTRONICA/POST-ROCK (KFM) Edinburgh-based laptop whiz David Jack has made three albums of atmospheric electronica on his own already, but spearheading this debut from a transatlantic four-way collaboration, he adds a more organic post-rocking vibe…

Kyte - Kyte

14 Feb 2008

POST ROCK (Kids) Post rockers tend to take themselves mighty seriously (our own lovable Mogwai aside), and the same goes for po-faced Leicestershire young guns Kyte. There is plenty of ambition here, and the band are unashamedly epic in an obviously…