The term "post-rock" is believed to have been coined by critic Simon Reynolds in his review of Bark Psychosis' album Hex, published in the March 1994 issue of Mojo magazine.[7] Reynolds expanded upon the idea later in the May 1994 issue of The Wire.[3][8] He used the term to describe music "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords". He further expounded on the term,
Perhaps the really provocative area for future development lies... in cyborg rock; not the wholehearted embrace of Techno's methodology, but some kind of interface between real time, hands-on playing and the use of digital effects and enhancement.
Reynolds, in a July 2005 entry in his blog, claimed he had used the term "post-rock" before using it in Mojo, previously using it in music newspaper Melody Maker.[9] He also said he later found the term not to be of his own creation, saying in his blog, "although I genuinely believed I was coining the term, I discovered many years later it had been floating around for over a decade." The term was used by American journalist James Wolcott in a 1975 article about musician Todd Rundgren, although with a different meaning.[10] It was also used in the Rolling Stone Album Guide to name a style roughly corresponding to "avant-rock" or "out-rock".[9]
Another pre-1994 example of the term in use can be found in an April 1992 review of 1990s noise-pop band The Earthmen by Steven Walker in Melbourne music publication Juke, where he describes a "post-rock noisefest".[11]