post-rock, genre of experimental rock music that combined elements of art rock, jazz, and alternative with electronic influences to create richly textured soundscapes.
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. Post-rock generally applied to bands that used the typical instruments of a rock band—two guitars, a bass, and drums—with nontraditional rhythms, melodies, and chord progressions. Guitars created ambience by altering the colour and quality of the sound. Vocals, if they were included, were frequently treated not as a vehicle for lyrics but as an additional instrument. The focus was on the texture of the music and the sound produced rather than on melodic patterns and the basic structure of a rock song. Embracing “quiet as the new loud,” post-rock shifted away from the hard, male-driven outbursts of rock music as that music became more commercialized; post-rock and other alternative genres were more independent and less commercially oriented.
The genre got its start in 1991 with landmark albums from two pioneer post-rock bands: Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock and Slint’s Spiderland. Some artists rejected the post-rock label, while others cheerfully embraced a genre that included such influential acts as Stereolab, Tortoise, and the Sea and Cake. Later examples of the genre included the orchestral rock of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the soaring “Hopelandic” vocals of Sigur Rós, and the sample-rich ambient pop of M83.