Jessamine Perez
With the pop music genre still dominating mainstream music today, it is time to give attention to the hidden spectacle that is the post-rock music genre. Not All Who Wonder Are Lost, the musical album by the Singaporean band Paint the Sky Red, exemplifies the post-rock genre, at least in its instrumental iteration.
But what is post-rock? “English music journalist and critic Simon Reynolds […] used the concept of Post-Rock, to describe a style of music that uses typical Rock instruments for non-rock purposes” (https://collapseundertheempire.com/post-rock/). These instruments are the guitar, bass, and drums. The post-rock music genre includes a variety of musical sounds and styles within it. Paint the Sky Red specifically uses an ambient, instrumental version of post-rock in their music, music that contains no vocals whatsoever. Here are four reasons why post-rock, specifically the post-rock album Not All Who Wonder Are Lost is worth listening to:
Mellow instrumental music fuses with typical rock instruments to create the unique sounds in every track of the album. This means that the music is neither too dull to make the listener sleepy nor too loud that people who do not like the forceful quality of typical rock music would be discouraged from listening.
The tracks are perfect for listening to while writing a long paper or long problem set as the music does not stagnate. Instead, the music may help lessen the boredom caused by the tedious tasks at hand.
Alternatively, this album can serve as perfect music to listen to when one is doing nothing.
Paint the Sky Red distances itself from the ill-conceived, contemporary mainstream music by not relying on auto-tuned voices, repetitive themes found in lyrical tracks, nor shock value to create meaningful tracks. Since these tracks lack lyrics, they can be interpreted in many different ways, as if they tell different stories through sound.
Jessamine (Jess) is a senior at Georgetown University Qatar. She majors in Culture and Politics.