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The Neo-human Motif of Post Rock in India

Post rock is a genre that has exploded in the last decade as an influence for upcoming bands. Since its conception through bands like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Oceansize and Pelican, there has been a feel of progressive minimalism, and continued motifs vis-a-vis the sound. The basic concept of this genre is a repeated sound pattern, played in different ways through the course of a song. This is done so the listener can pass through a range of emotive phases, mostly melancholic, all emanating from the same base riff.

Most rock is inherently instrumental, with guitar or synth tones that are heavy in treble replacing the human voice component. There are many post rock bands with singers, but even bands like Mogwai have adapted the role of vocals in the group dynamic. The singer mainly just focuses on melodies that are warped with numerous effects until ultimately the vocals just become another instrument too. However, some completely instrumental post rock bands like Toe or Tortoise beautifully evoke the distant, wispy, dreamy and melancholic emotion that the genre contains. Certain bands are actually known for a unique type of emotive sound. Sigur Ros, for example, have a very droning pace, which goes well with the “Hopelandic” language they sing in. Explosions in the Sky often go for that larger-than-life, epic sound, while God is an Astronaut has a heavy, psychedelic sound. Yet all of them contain that distinctive facet of post rock.

Until We Last, a very popular local post rock band, has stuck onto the essence of the genre very efficiently and almost sounds like an international post rock band. Having gigged extensively in Bangalore and in quite a few other cities around the country, they have several tracks put up on SoundCloud which are listened to by a wide bunch of people. DeadStar, solo project of Nihal Anand from Delhi, has also released three albums, up on BandCamp. You can choose your price to purchase any one of the albums. These albums have electronically programmed drums, keys and synth, but are quite hard hitting nonetheless. His style of sound differs from Until We Lasts’. Intricate time signatures and psychedelic noises are prominent and each of his albums reflects a changing sound frontier. Newly started up band Space Behind the Yellow Room, also plays a sort of surreal post rock, laden with environmental motifs. It’s very interesting to see the natural progression of this genre in a city dominated by metal. Now, non-competitive platforms are slowly starting to emerge that can facilitate such music as the number of these kinds of bands has risen itself.

As post rock grows, more chimeras or funky mixes will continue sprouting up, forever changing the concept of the sound of one genre and transforming it into more multilateral realms.

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