1. **Lunasa, “Feabhra”**: My favorite traditional Irish band. These guys are *really* traditional
\ninstrumental Irish – Uillean pipes, flute, guitar, bodhran, and bass. The pipe player is
\nwithout doubt one of the best, if not *the* best in the world. I thought that I hated all kinds
\nof bagpipes until I saw Cillian Vallely performing live (before he joined Lunasa).
\n2. **Darol Angers Republic of Strings, “Bluebird”**: A track from Darol Angers latest project. Pretty much anything Darol does is gold; this isn’t one of my favorite tracks, because I don’t
\nlike the singer, but it’s got red-hot fiddling holding it all together, which makes up for it.
\n3. **Tortoise, “Unknown”**: Tortoise is another post-rock ensemble; one of the earliest ones. They’re good, but not great.
\n4. **Bach, “Mer Sprach: Gehet Hin” from St. Matthews Passion**: Bach is the greatest composer
\nwho ever lived; and I think that St. Matthews Passion is his finest work. A little slice
\nof perfection.
\n5. **Harry Bradley, “Dave Maguires\/Gary Hastings Reels”**: very minimal traditional Irish fluting by a master. Harry is a brilliant flautist – he knows how to play with *enough* ornamentation to really punch the rhythm, but he never plays a single note more than he needs to. These reels feature him playing with nothing but a bouzouki and a trace of bohdran backing him. And it doesn’t need any more. It’s got amazing bounce and spirit to it, played by Harry at his reedy-sounding best.
\n6. **Rachel’s, “4 or 5 Trees”**. One of my favorite post-rock ensembles. Rachel’s is a very
\nclassical-leaning PRE, and everything they do is brilliant.
\n7. **ProjeKct Two, “Escape from Sagittarius A”**: free improv by one of the trios that made up the last incarnation of King Crimson: Trey Gunn on bass\/stick, Fripp on Guitar, and Adrian Belew playing a drum synth. Wierd, but good. It’s great to hear Fripp when he’s getting way
\nout there; he’s often so disciplined that he holds back, so it’s amazing to hear him really
\nkick loose. Sure, some of it isn’t great – but some of it has a brilliance that can only come
\nfrom spontanaeity.
\n8. **Mogwai, “I Chose Horses”**: yet another post-rock ensemble, this one from the more rock-oriented end of the genre. This is a mellowish track from them, with a very distinctively Mogwai sound to it.
\n9. **Miles Davis, “How Deep is the Ocean”**. Miles Davis. What more need be said?
\n10. **Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Sleep: They Don’t Sleep Anymore On The Beach\/Monheim\/Broken Windows, Locks Of Love Part III”**. Godspeed is the absolute unquestionably greatest of the rock-leaning post-rock ensembles. This track is very typical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1. **Lunasa, “Feabhra”**: My favorite traditional Irish band. These guys are *really* traditional instrumental Irish – Uillean pipes, flute, guitar, bodhran, and bass. The pipe player is without doubt one of the best, if not *the* best in the world. I thought that I hated all kinds of bagpipes until I saw Cillian Vallely performing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[303],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-45","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}