With the recent release of Spotify Wrapped on Nov 30th, many Spotify users feel a slight embarrassment about what their analytics have to say about them. This common sentiment likely develops after seeing that one’s music taste is actually a bit “basic” or “cringy” when laid out on Spotify Wrapped. In preparation for the next Spotify Wrapped 2023, let’s introduce you to different music genres and subgenres to potentially improve your disposition and expand upon your current taste.

It’s important to recognize the importance of music as an expansive, transformative, and universal art form, and that understanding the complexity of music is what gives its artistry beauty. This complexity creates a certain difficulty in completely “defining” genres of music, which inspires different bands and artists to search for new innovative sounds. An example of this strive-to-be novel is Post Punk Rock, a lesser-known yet incredibly influential genre of music. In this article, I hope to establish a layout of the defining elements of Post-Rock, and its history to introduce you to this lesser-known genre. 

Post-Rock has a relatively unknown history as it is a more broad and unexplored music subgenre. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “The term post-rock was coined in 1994 by music critic Simon Reynolds in his discussion of the music of Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis.”  who used the more typical instruments of a rock band while incorporating their own take on rock through the use of more unorthodox rhythms, melodies, and innovative chord progressions. Post-rock became another alternative rock genre that differed from the standard rock music of bands Led Zeppelin and Rush through new ideas that incorporated both jazz and shoegaze elements to create a new seemingly indescribable sound.

Another prominent Post-Rock band is Slint who is ironically still relatively unknown. Slint paved the way for Post-Rock in the late 80s and early 90s through the use of an innovative structure that included defining post-rock elements through the manipulation of layered volume. Their 1991 album Spiderland has been greatly influential in other alternative almost electronic genres to bands such as Stereolab.