Post Rock I: Decoder Ring-They Blind The Stars, And The Wild Team

I usually post on theological or biblical items but occasionally decide to post on other items of interest (because it's my blog). Anyone that knows me knows that I have taken a shining to music called Post Rock and Ambient recently. I guess back in the 1970's and 1980’s it was called Space Rock. I consider it a poor man’s Avant-Garde or poor man’s Experimental Rock. Some of this Post Rock and Ambient easily shifts over or morphs into what can be considered modern classical or music that is often used in soundtracks of movies or theme music for software like gaming and other applications. Either way, I like both permutations.

The music puts me in a reflective mood and allows me to use my limited worship time through study to its best use. I consider some of this music a blessing to me. As a reference point to the uninitiated, I will state that if there are patriarchs of the genre they are Brian Eno and Steve Roach. More recently the most popular purveyors of this music have been Sigor Ros. I suppose on the outer fringe you could throw in Vangelis too. Direct from Wikipedia…

Post-rock is a sub-genre of rock music characterized by the influence and use of instruments commonly associated with rock, but using rhythms and "guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures" not traditionally found in rock. Post-rock bands are often without vocals.

Some of this stuff I like so much that I have decided to post my favorites up to the blog. Since most of my writing time is dedicated to theological/biblical posts I will only post the album cover with a rating on a scale of 1 to 100. Obviously most will be high ratings as I won’t recommend junk and waste blog space to promote garbage. Occasionally I might comment but like the music, I will limit vocals and let the instrumentation speak for itself. Where available I will link to a sample of the music or an example of what makes it appealing to me.

First up is Beat the Twilight from Decoder Ring’s album They Blind the Stars & the Wild Team. The above video is visually dizzying but the atmosphere created by the music captures what I like about the band. [Rating 100 of 100]