By Grant Bailey (@GrantDBailey)
Released 30th November 2015 via Function Books.
Today Function Books are proud to announce the forthcoming release of Storm Static Sleep: A Pathway Through Post-Rock. This book is believed to be the most detailed account of history and development of the post-rock genre to-date. The book (written by Jack Chuter) chronicles the evolution of post-rock and it’s rise in popularity through chapters covering the bands and festivals that have defined the genre including: Talk Talk, Slint, Disco Inferno, Tortoise, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Neurosis, 65daysofstatic and ArcTanGent.
Over the past twenty-five years post-rock has evolved from a handful of bands challenging the dynamics, timbre and conventional format and concept of rock songwriting, into a scene with a huge international community of both bands and steadfast fans. Not only does post-rock now have its own dedicated festivals such as ArcTanGent but it is also widely used in soundtracks, advertising and has become a broadly accepted genre that attracts new listeners every day.
Despite post rock’s ever-growing popularity and the devotion of its audience, post-rock’s origins and history are either largely unspoken of or are recalled in such a way that many of the subtle connections and influences that made post-rock what it is today are left in the dark. Storm Static Sleep is the first book that has ever been solely dedicated to telling the full history of the genre’s musical and semantic origin.
In the process of telling this history, author Jack Chuter recalls and interrogates the various bands and influencers that drove others to question the limits of their songwriting, while talking to both the artists that renounced the post-rock label and the journalists and writers that championed it.
In creating Storm Static Sleep Chuter has undertaken over thirty first-hand interviews with some of the most influential names in post-rock including the likes of Mogwai, Tortoise, Steve Albini, Mono, Isis, Slint, Sunn O))), This Will Destroy You, Disco Inferno, Piano Magic, Constellation Records as well as writer Simon Reynolds, the main proliferator of the term ‘post-rock’ itself.
Each chapter of the book explores a different stage of post-rock’s development by looking at the influence and sound of key bands as well as the insight of influential writers of the time. The chapters not only discuss how the bands all fit within the post-rock bracket but they also explore what directed them to this particular style and what they achieved musically in doing so. Storm Static Sleep doesn’t just set out to explicate and contextualise the history of post-rock, but to also re-define what post-rock actually is and means to those who were and are directly and inadvertently enveloped by the term.
Storm Static Sleep: A Pathway Through Post-Rock is available to pre-order now.
