Double LP
Post-rock sensibilities really seem to caught a wave of late with a younger generation of music makers. Genre agnosticism, anti-formalism, cultural pluralism, instrumentalism that incoporates more beyond the conventional bass-guitar-drum set up, long where you might expect short and short where you might expect long, and so forth. Since it's a coin termed 30+ years ago, you might reasonably assume that anything that doesn't now follow these principles to be either trad. or reductive (not necessarily bad things in themselves, but certainly tied to a different creative purview), and of course there's the internet and outlets like NTS that have arguably precipitated a wideneing of cultural perspectives and approaches. In other words, isn't it logical that all rock should now be considered post-rock? You can't put the genie back in the bottle, right? Well, yes and no. If the world doesn't exactly work that way, then Irish nine-piece Trá Pháidín certainly didn't get the memo. An 424, their first music to be put to vinyl since their formation in 2019, feels like a very post-everything record in terms of both form and function, a confluence of multi-instrumental arrangements that buttresses together a joyous mix of jazz, krautrock, folk, exotica and drone in such a way so as to express the missing link between the 90s Chicago underground, Irish folk song and current-moment Gothenburg. The temptation might be to link what Trá Pháidín are doing with the work of Lankum, and being Irish in a way that doesn't hide their heritage (the album is about the psychogeograhic experiences of a bus ride through the Gaels) means they're certainly kicking the same tyres and lighting similar fires. The difference is in the delivery. If Lankum edge towards the darker nights of the soul, Trá Pháidín are probing at the cracks to let the light pore in. Equally, the academic connotations of a term like post-rock also falls a little short in capturing how intuitive and open-hearted these 12 tracks are, music that radiates outwards, embracing ideas, shifting from foot to foot in that dance between the cerebral and the instinctive. Yes, these are very good players, who play very well together, but if that's all that you concentrate on here then I might argue you've missed half the point. If you're making music like this in a place like Conamara, Galway, then the point is to do it if it feels good. If you've even a little love for the likes of Can, Stereolab, Organic Music Society, or Tortoise, pull up a chair. This is the extending of that lineage, the sense and sensibility, and the spirit too.
FFO: Can, Pharoah Sanders, Tortoise, Organic Music Society, JJULIUS, Stereolab
