Mogwai - Mogwai Young Team
Looking to explore the vast soundscapes of instrumental rock and post-rock? Start here...
Long before media spats with Metallica, Mogwai put out a debut that turned the UK rock scene on its head, with delay-heavy tremolo picking and cyclic two-chord progressions the order of the day, culminating in 16-minute dynamic powerhouse Mogwai Fear Satan.
Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
The triple-guitar onslaught of this Texan four-piece marries crystalline arpeggios with gut-wrenching melodies.
Their third album is hard to top. Excerpts of its tracklisting - most notably, First Breath After Coma - have soundtracked their fair share of weepy moments in film and TV, too.
Battles - Mirrored
Featuring members of Don Caballero and Helmet, this alternative supergroup gave math-rock a shot of off-kilter adrenaline with their 2007 debut.
They garnered mainstream attention, too, with Atlas appearing in ads for Sony’s LittleBigPlanet.
Slint - Spiderland
Littered with sparse clean guitars and ripping distorted passages, this 1991 album is what many consider to be the first ‘proper’ post-rock release.
Guitarist David Pajo went on to join Tortoise in the mid-90s and short-lived Billy Corgan-led supergroup Zwan in 2003.
Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun
Where would BBC wildlife documentaries be without these Icelandic atmosphere merchants?
Jónsi Birgisson is renowned for his prominent use of a cello bow to form huge orchestral textures, best captured on the band’s unpronounceable 1999 album.
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"I wrote that riff when I was 15": How A-ha's Take On Me beat the odds against them to become one of the biggest songs of all time
