Each of the two groups responded to the moment differently: Explosions took on the mantle of crescendo-heavy instrumental rock, in perfect step with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai. múm, on the other hand, crafted delicate, tender electronic miniatures that felt like homespun versions of Aphex Twin’s most wistful tracks. But, as much as they seem like polar opposites, both groups were engaged in a moment of radical rebuilding. Explosions replaced the macho swagger of metal, excising the sex and (hard) drugs from the rock 'n' roll equation, and replaced them with a near-spiritual emphasis on beauty, scale and drama. múm similarly scrapped the legacy of punk from indie rock and raving from electronics and found something intimate and mossy in their place. Both groups are unabashedly sentimental; we defy you to not feel something when you listen.
The rest of the lineup reflects the long tail of this cultural moment. There was a time when seeing a band like Radiohead using modular synths and drum machines onstage seemed radical. Now it’s more unusual for a group not to have some kind of electronics in their set. Let’s look at the broader context of the era and cultural turning point that this edition of Outline celebrates.
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996)
Perhaps no decade produced as many instrumental rock bands as the ‘90s, and perhaps no other band was quite as exemplary of that era as Tortoise. With this 1996 album in particular, the long-running Chicago unit became one of the most influential ensembles of the era. If punk had emerged as response to the bloated virtuosity of prog rock, Tortoise found a way to fold in prog’s penchant for complexity, long-form suites and brainy imagination back into the no-nonsense, no-sellout indie/punk underground. The jazzy minimalism of their 20+ minute opener “Djed” nodded to krautrock, Steve Reich, Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, all while adding their own understated signature. For those of us who were there at the time, Tortoise was a band you simply had to respond to. Love them, hate them, whatever, there was no way to ignore Tortoise.
Kranky Records
Chicago was a major hub for post rock and its many interrelated subgenres, with labels like Thrill Jockey and Drag City standing as pillars. But Kranky Records has remained a cult favorite. Artists like Labradford, Windy & Carl, Low and Pan-American all came together in one of the most quietly iconic label rosters ever assembled. Kranky’s muted presentation and artful feel dispensed with hype and panache, evoking the deep greys and wabi sabi clean-messiness of ECM Records, repurposed for pre-hipster music nerds who were looking past Pavement and Fugazi for something more mysterious. Check out this 1996 Stars of the Lid LP, which moves with all the stately detachment of a cloudbank drifting across the sky.
Oval
Anyone who’s had a CD collection knows the sound: the sharp, digital glitch of a CD skipping. Unlike vinyl, which typically skips in a loping, softshoe rhythm, CDs sound a bit like a car alarm going off. It’s jarring, unpleasant and was a major nuisance of the era. But Markus Popp, aka Oval, heard a wellspring of creative possibilities in the sound of mechanical failure. The thing everyone knows about Oval is that Popp painted and drew on discs to create the exact skipping sounds that consumers sought to avoid, and turned them into music. A common joke at the time was shouting out the “Oval remix” when a CD would start skipping.
What he gets perhaps less credit for is the profundity of his work. Oval’s music is mesmerizing and often heartfelt. Like múm’s work, Popp’s albums feel strikingly tactile, often built out of tiny scraps. Listening to him describe his process is mindboggling and inspiring, especially once you take in the results: "I was sampling off previously existing CDs, but now most of the sound sources I have used on my latest CDs come from within the archive, out of the process. Since I'm using all these very fragmented sounds, effectively the technique I use for creating sound over time can be compared to making an animated film. You have these tiny frames of sound and you have to make an effort to make them move over time by gluing these tiny pieces one after another. The sounds in the archive are basically just tiny sound files, which would not make any sense at all if they're played on their own. Sometimes I loop them, but even if a loop's repeated over the length of the entire track for maybe three minutes running in the background, being one of the many tracks, the loop itself is composed out of these really small sound fragments.”
Popp was also an early adapter of the computer as a performance tool, triggering any number of snarky remarks from rock fans who felt his show was too cerebral, cheating, boring, or even offensive. Thankfully, Popp was (and remains) an erudite commentator on his own work, and in interviews he was able to briskly dismantle the most common kneejerk responses. “I was never interested in synthesizers and electronic music. I never know what people are talking about when they ask me about Kraftwerk or whatever. The keyboard era of sound production was over maybe 10 years ago. Since then we can talk about music productivity being completely located in software — it's the Powerbook era.”
My Bloody Valentine
We would be remiss to not mention the emphasis of shoegaze, the mostly-UK birthed rock movement, on post-rock and electronic sound, and specifically My Bloody Valentine. Kevin Shields and co managed to turn their guitars into overwhelming, washed out textures that were both vaporous and thundering, situating their lush onslaught around a cool center of mellow, nearly-whispered vocals. The “loud-quiet-loud” dynamic was enough of a trope of the era that Kurt Cobain fretted about leaning on it too hard when writing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” But when MBV launches into their heaviest sections, there’s not a cliché in sight. Their singular songwriting, frankly bizarre sound design and focus on the uncanny region between the visceral and electronic was one of the great gauntlets to get thrown down in an era that was honestly full of them.
múm formed in 1997 and Explosions in the Sky followed in 1999. Both groups emerged from a context when the above-mentioned artists were essential listening, but not yet canonical. It was an era that felt both trepidatious and exciting. So much had just happened over the last ten years, and there was so much left to do. At the same time, a regressive sea change was taking place, with bands like The Strokes and the White Stripes turning heads for returning to “real” rock.
In many ways, the back half of the ‘90s felt defined by skepticism - of corporate music, the “rock star” persona, of technology, hedonism, the state, and even the underground scenes that so many great artists emerged from. At the same time, there was a commitment to forge a new path. Hip Hop, jungle, techno, indie rock, black metal, and so, so many other genres and scenes were developing a breakneck speed, positing interconnected visions of future that always seemed to be about to crest. Watching the millennium tick over and quietly pack up so much of that radical spirit was a strange heartbreak for many.
But ideas never die and art always finds a way. In addition to Explosions and múm, we’ve invited Mabe Fratti, upsammy, They Are Gutting a Body of Water and Diles Que No Me Maten to complete the lineup. Each artist feels of a piece with the late ‘90s, if not in sound, then in spirit. Each brings a searching quality and an unclassifiable genre agnosticism to their work, as well as a total commitment to performance. We’re proud to present this lineup at the second Outline of 2025. And if you’ve read this far…that means you’re a real head, so here’s a ticket that’s $10 off.