post-rock
A genre that uses rock instrumentation — guitars, bass, drums — in non-traditional ways, emphasizing texture, dynamics, and atmosphere over conventional song structures.
In Depth
Post-rock emerged in the early 1990s, with the term coined by critic Simon Reynolds in 1994. The genre deconstructs rock music's conventions: vocals are often absent or heavily processed, guitars create washes of sound rather than riffs, and compositions build slowly through extended crescendos and diminuendos. The emphasis is on timbre and atmosphere rather than melody or verse-chorus form.
Pioneering acts include Slint, whose album Spiderland (1991) established many post-rock conventions; Talk Talk, whose later albums abandoned pop for expansive soundscapes; and Tortoise, who incorporated jazz and electronic elements. Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor brought cinematic grandeur to the genre, while Sigur Rós added ethereal vocals in Icelandic (or invented languages). Explosions in the Sky became the genre's most commercially successful act through their film soundtrack work, particularly Friday Night Lights.
Talk Talk's transformation from synth-pop hitmakers to post-rock pioneers was so radical that their label EMI sued them for delivering an uncommercial album — Spirit of Eden is now considered a masterpiece.