Extract from the introductory flyer for the Dead Pilot Records Post-Rock 101 Kit:

“Are you tired of trying to find new ways on how to get into post-rock? Are the obscure, often acronymic references bandied around in clique-oriented forums and webzines beginning to prove to be a hindrance to your quest in becoming a gaudy self-made post-rock authority? Dead Pilot Records provides an easy-solution to solve your woes, with its Post-Rock Kit 101. For six easy payments of $49.95, plus delivery, we will provide a step by step guide which, by the end of its program, will have you firing an endless canon of names oozing profundity at the drop of a hat.

Enclosed is a free sampler, valued at absolutely nothing—that’s right, nothing. We cover a wide range of different ways in this broad, vague and heavily disputed term can be recycled, demonstrating with each piece that regardless of the versatile instrumentation or opportunities to break a stylistic mould, we can keep it as bland and generic as humanly possible. We are guaranteed to out-genericise any competition.

Uncertain as to how the electric guitar becomes a staple instruments in post-rock? Wires on this sampler offers an adequate variety of techniques and motifs in which melodies can be played in most textbook, cookie-cutter sense. But that’s not all; for those who thought things could not get more generic, our answer is in The Soul’s Release. That’s right, generic guitarwork in both glittery soon-to-be heard-it-before melodies and sweeping epic strumming, with bonus added low fidelity demo quality effects and queued crashing cymbals absolutely free.

Uncertain about how to incorporate an acoustic guitar? Having problems understanding the virtues of not overwhelming all other sounds with distortion? Message to Bears offers an easy and guaranteed forgettable solution with layers of cute little melancholic riffs dished out on an acoustic guitar.  Where would the genre be without undesirable, superfluous vocals? That’s right; vocals we, as listeners, didn’t expect, didn’t want and sure as hell could’ve done without! Men as Trees not only deliver them to you in a completely abrupt and wanton manner, but as an added bonus, will include a pinch of randomness absolutely free.

Thinking about being one of those know-it-alls who likes to use ‘post-rock’ as an all-encompassing umbrella term? Itching to extend the label’s application to pretty standard alternative rock bands like Sonic Youth for no reason other than to be able to associate them with a misguided sense of “hip”? We have a solution! As a bonus, 1877, conveniently named after the number of times you’ve more or less heard the same thing from the aforementioned seminal quartet, have included their only marginally inferior replication on this free compilation.

And where would a post-rock know-it-all be without being able to have some kind of discernment of post-rock’s rhythmically complex, and for the sake of parsing, traditionally unhyphenated cousin, math rock. Instruments, a band whose existence appears to be helpful as a confusion device for item description writers, offers their own interpretation of math rock genre—an interpretation which by and large is copy-pasted from compositional structures preceding artists like, say, Seattle’s You.May.Die.In.The.Desert; its bland and blatant unoriginality guarantees you will never have trouble predicting what the templates are for its adopted style.

If you listen to any release of the same genre in the past and you are not fully convinced that at least one of the tracks off this compilation is somehow utterly derived from it in the most unflatteringly bland and unoriginal form, we will give you back your money, minus delivery, no questions asked. As a token of our guarantee, we’ve include a slightly less blatant piece by Ekca Liena, as proof to you, our valued customer, that by contrast the generic nature, and thus true value of the rest of this sampler, is simply undeniable. We also guarantee that because our compilation has been engineered carefully with state-of-the-art forgettability, we are so confident about its unmemorable nature that should you find yourself remembering any single bar of this sampler, we will happily refund your money, again minus delivery, no questions asked.

Pay by credit card, and you’ll receive A Guide to Post-Rock Semantics absolutely free, complete with a self-installing title generator equipped with gratuitous punctuation, phrase repetition, and a comprehensive list of useful vocabulary pertaining but not limited to geographical phenomena, extinct wildlife, existentialism, meteorological catastrophes, evolution, Marxism, the apocalypse, the post-apocalypse, Alaska and airport terminals. Check out the testimonials from When the Tigers Broke Free, who happily generated the song title included on the free sampler.

Remember, this offer is not available in stores, and is for a limited time only, so order now. Some conditions may apply.”

3/10