RawkStar

One thing that generally annoys me with the state of music journalism and publications is the lack of coverage of post-rock. For the uninitiated, post-rock is a genre in which traditional rock instruments are used to perform classical tasks. That is, a focus on composition, timbres, crescendos and what have you. The songs performed by post-rock artists are typically long, often pushing the 8 minute or over mark, and void of any song. Now, I do realise that there are two million things that sound infinitely better on paper, but bear with me. Post-rock groups like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky have created some of the most beautiful pieces of modern music. Songs that build up from a meagre beginning, only to end in a heart-wrenching crash, boom and a bang 8 minutes later as guitars are throttled, drummers ravage their kits and violins float on top.

As I am a great fan of this genre, I’d like to see more coverage of it in the press. Usually the average review of a post-rock album is short, mentions something about the artist being from Canada, and gives it a high rating without explaining why. Because of this, I feel that many people are passed by these wonderful artists and the music they make. As such, here is a list of some great bands you should experience:

– Godspeed You! Black Emperor
– Explosions in the Sky
– Mono
– A Silver Mt. Zion
– Fly Pan AM
– 65 Days of Static
– The Cathode Ray Syndrome*
– The Exploits of Elaine
– Mogwai

I was listening to Radio 1 today (Scott Mills show) while driving home from work, they started talking about Wikipedia and how they thought it was amusing to edit other Radio 1 presenters profiles (e.g. saying they’re romantically linked to random people). Now, anyone that knows about Wikipedia, understands that it’s a resource for information, not a page to have a little fun making things up about random people and events and the users and administrators would get slightly pissed… some of it was amusing, I have to admit, but all it did was cause their profiles to be locked and probably their user accounts removed/banned (and probably the entire BBC’s IP address range blocked!).

Most people who keep up with the news will have heard about people adding fake data to journalist John Seigenthaler’s biography and other such incidents and know how big an effect it had on the site and peoples views on it.

Another thing that annoys me about the Scott Mills show is the people that request songs which have been played about 20 times already that day i.e. Sugababes, Ugly. It’s just pointless. I guess it’s limited to their playlists though… Good thing is, Starsailor are having a lot of airtime lately! (They’re on as I write this) with their new single ‘This Time’.