We are lost in glass and smoke

THERE'S A DARK CORNER IN THE BASEMENT OF MUSIC THAT'S FULL OF SUCH RICH DIVERSITY AND POWERFUL EMOTION. That corner is post-punk. After the punk explosion in the mid 1970's, many musicians began to feel as if the entire punk ethos was too... simple. "Fuck the government," they'd say as they struck three-chord two minute bashes against a crowd of ruthless self-proclaimed 'anarchists.' Punk quickly became a parody of itself as quickly as it became prominent. It's said that with the release of an actual LP in "Never Mind the Bollocks," punk was gone.

Johnny Rotten, famed frontman of perhaps the most well-known punk outfit the Sex Pistols, quickly departed this scene and formed a new band in Public Image Ltd. He decided he wanted to reinvent his public perception. In an interview in the late 70's, he told of his disdain for his reputation as an anarchist. The man was actually far more intellectual than he let on: he was a book-worm and classical music advocate, unlike the psychotic trouble-causing persona he had with the Pistols. And with that, the idea of punk became even less dignified.

Then we have Howard Devoto, who contributed to the first DIY 7" release with the Buzzcocks. Again, he soon left to sought after more experimental means, and so began his own band: Magazine.

These two bands are the crucial forefathers of post-punk. They might not be the most well-known now (that credit clearly goes to the likes of The Cure and Joy Division) but their firm roots in the punk world really cement the idea of post-punk.

So what is post-punk? Yeah, I've talked a lot about what caused it, but what exactly is it? It's a difficult thing to pin down musically. There is such a variety of styles within post-punk that it's hard to describe any set conditions that define it. However, I can say that post-punk certainly takes aspects of punk, most notably the raw power and political/philosophical ideas, but expanded them with both a larger mindset and instrument set. The synthesizer, an instrument, or as some would refer to it as an "instrument," was a tool that was frowned upon heavily in punk. When Alternative TV released their debut album 'The Image Has Cracked' in 1978, the opening sound was a big synth riff. This wasn't accidental. This was a "fuck you" to the hypocritical ideas of punk itself. For a movement that proclaimed itself as being anti-establishment and rule-less, they sure did hate anything that wasn't within a narrow set of distinctions.

So post-punk sprawls across psychedelia, ska, progressive, alternative, gothic, new wave, synthpop and countless others, but there's always something, something that I can't quite pinpoint that really ties it all together. You know when you're listening to post-punk. It's hard to say why sometimes, but you just know. In this blog, I'm going to be reviewing some of my favourite post-punk albums, and I'm going to thread it all between discussions and reviews on my favourite post-punk figure, and a man who has without hyperbole shaped a lot of my emotional language and life philosophies: Adrian Borland. He's most notable as the lead singer and songwriter of The Sound, but he also did a bunch of other projects: in fact he even released the first DIY punk album and has 20 studio albums to his name.

So enjoy this soaring dive into the dark abyss of post-punk.