EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY

Explosions in the sky worked on their skillset, got more ambitious and mature in their songwriting. Songs became longer which is always is a risky decision in post-rock. Either you make things develop slower or you need to add more ideas to compensate for the length. I think that the band is somewhere in between. Increased attention to sonic details expanded their guitar radius space, while the rhythm section attentively complements the atmosphere. Music is more memorable and optimistic compared to their debut album. From the album tracks, I appreciate the haunting "Memorial" most, for its elaborate grave post-rock interplay. For more optimistic driven listeners, I recommend the last track with a clear melody line "Your hand in mine".

The debut album by Explosions in the sky already bears some of their trademark characteristics: "Crescendos" alternating with mellower parts, above average guitar work (for post-rock, not symphonic prog ;-)) and a likable sound of instruments in the mix. What the band hasn't reached yet was their unique position in the post-rock world and the level of experimentation seen on the subsequent releases. If you listen to tracks like "Magic hours", you can absorb the music quickly because you feel the familiarity with some other post-rock material. For me, the greatest asset here are the consistent slightly introspective atmosphere and good interplay. Not necessarily an output I can listen to as main music but a good background post-rock material with decent guitar interplay.

For a new EITS listener. I recommend starting with their second album and continue until the 2011's "Take care take care take care".

Post rock is definitely a genre of music I have been quite familiar with ever since I started getting really into music. One day I was listening to Jamiroquai and Prince, and then bam, I was listening to some very heavy tracks that sounded like they came from a nightmare. It was honestly weird and crazy to me then but now, I really dig it. Some interesting stuff to be found with these albums, and the fan recognition is well deserved. Even when it is fairly niche, it adds and inspires so much to the modern music scene. One of the more popular acts that came from the post rock scene has to be Explosions In The Sky. Founded in Texas in 1999, they have a pretty strong following and a strong reputation. I have heard about this group for a bit of a while now, and I have been sorta interested in checking them out for a while, so I decided to check out one of their more popular releases, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. After hearing it, I can say that it's pretty alright, I'll explain when talking about the songs.

The first song is First Breath After Coma. It starts off with a little guitar chord being plucked that evolves into a bass riff, then a more cohesive guitar riff with drums, and more and more the song just seems to evolve with more textures and ambience, giving the track a dream-like feel to it all, and as the song progresses it keeps up with it's own tempo without the direct need for changing things all too much, just subtle changes to get the ball rolling. I really like this track as a starter, it allows you to introduce yourself to the sound of this band without the need of beating you over the head with it. However I feel like this track lacks a level of emotion. It's definitely pretty, but what I love about post rock is that it can bring out the emotions of anyone, whether anger, sadness, confusion, fear, etc and etc. This doesn't do it for me, and I feel like if they added a bit more, maybe some field recordings and samples from stuff then maybe it'd give me those feels I am craving for, but right now as it stands, it's not that good at the job.

The next song is The Only Moment We Were Alone. It's a bit quieter and a bit more spacey than the last track, which I actually think adds a bit more charm unlike the last track, and it definitely makes me feel something a little more. I feel a bit cold when listening to this track, it's not creepy but it does somehow give me a bit of the chills with how the guitar plays and those great drums. They add more and more to the song as it goes on, taking some breaks in between to spice things up. This is a major improvement already, and it has already become one of my favorite tracks on the album.

Moving along we have Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean. It continues the same torch the last track pulled but it has its own charm, like how the guitars now sound like they are weeping, and how near the end it sounds like it is building up more and more to some climax that sadly, doesn't come to fruition. It just sorta ends, and I think it dampers the song majorly. It builds up to what could've been a great finisher for this song, but it never comes out, and it kinda makes me a little peeved. I wanted something, really anything. A big crescendo, a wall of noise, a guitar being shredded, literally anything would make this song so much better, but as it stands, it just kinda feels weak without what could've been at the end, so the journey would be so much more worthwhile.

After that, we got Memorial, and I really like this song. It starts off quiet and desolate but over time it gets more intense and bigger, heck it even gets a bit heavy with guitars that sound like something you'd hear on a heavy metal album. I honestly love how this song flows. It's so satisfying hearing the song switch from something so soft and delicate to something intense and awesome. It adds so much to this album that I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised when I first heard this song. The more I hear it the more I see the potential this band holds with their music, and I think this is one of their best songs to date with all of that reasoning alone.

And now the last track, Your Hand In Mine. This is very much like the first track as a matter of fact. A dream like feel with some great guitar work and drumming that gives the song it's own ambience that makes things all worthwhile in the end, however it still has the problem where it lack any really major emotions out of me, plus it just sorta ends without anything really big and grand, much like Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean, making the whole experience kinda half assed in my eyes. It's still a fine song, but it could've had so much potential to really make it the best it could've been.

So I like this album, but I am also very mixed at these songs. Sometimes they are great but other times, they feel like they lack the full potential this band can bring. As it stands, this is a fine album, but one I wouldn't listen to constantly. It's there, it's been done, it has some cool songs and sounds, but that's more or less all I have to say for this album.

There is a reason why Explosions in the Sky is one of the most talked about and popular post rock bands out there. They know how to use the post rock formula of taking a basic theme and developing on it by adding and taking away layers and using dynamics very effectively. There is a lot more to their music than starting out soft and building to a climax, they use variants of this theme to develop a musical idea or portrait. Their music is strong and emotional, and not one lyric has to be sung to make it that way. The biggest problem I have with them, is that there isn't enough variation in their sound like there is with Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. There just isn't enough experimentation and novelty. But many of their fans are okay with this and they like the predictability. For me, variation is always important for me to retain interest in a band or an album.

That being said, this album is an excellent album. It's just hard for me to be totally enthusiastic about it because there just isn't enough variety. Song development is excellent here, dynamics are ever present, and things are not always completely predictable, but in some ways, the tone of the music is predictable. At least they do vary in the overall post rock formula.

The album starts out with "The Birth and Death of a Day" which is an excellent and powerful opener. The music fits the title completely and was inspired by the mountains that surrounded the narrator in Steinbeck's novel "East of Eden", how the mountain range in the east heralded the beginning of the day and the range in the west represented evil because they ate the sun. Talk about an effective soundtrack to that idea, the power of the music representing the majestic mountain ranges, and how the quietness at the end represents the twilight. Amazing song.

Next is "Welcome Ghosts" that is a nice typical post rock song, but doesn't leave as much of an impression on me. The third track is much better. "It's Natural to be Afraid" is an epic track at over 13 minutes, and it stays surprisingly interesting throughout the track. The reason for this is because, even though the overall feeling is the same as the rest of the album, the development of the themes and the uses of dynamics is a lot more varied. The music is a lot more interesting simply because it moves around a lot more in feeling, and emotions are also very high on this track.

Next up is "What Do You Go Home To?" This has some very pretty shimmering piano played against some pensive guitar chords and arpeggios, but it's rather short (at almost 5 minutes) and could have been developed a little more. The melody is not as apparent in this one, but that's okay because it does have a lot of atmosphere. I would have liked this one to have been longer with more development. "Catastrophe and the Cure" is a longer track, but is too typical sounding as far as post rock goes. The percussion is too clunky sounding to me. The theme is a little repetitive and the layering is very thick in the louder sections. "So Long, Lonesome" is short at under 4 minutes, and, while it is a quiet track, it lacks in development, which hurts it's effectiveness in the overall picture. It does bring a little hope to the dark tones, but not enough to bring the entire package above the same-ness of tone. When percussion joins for a short time at the end of the track, it seems nice, but that clunkiness is there again.

Overall, this one holds my interest better than some of the other similar sounding post rock albums, but I still lose interest before it's all over. The mood changes a little throughout, but not enough to consider this a masterpiece. I believe that it is worth checking out if you want to explore post rock bands, because there is enough interesting material here to consider it worthy of being an excellent recording, just not enough to make it essential.

The new album from Explosions in the Sky is disappointing for a number of reasons. First of all, on this album they jettison the instrumentation that made them so unique (3 electric guitars/sometimes bass, and drums) and the intricate counterpoint of the guitarists playing repeated lines up the register that made albums like 'The Earth is Not a Dead Cold Place' (TEINACDP) so memorable, and which set the pattern for what I think of as the EITS 'sound' (that album stands for me as their ultimate musical statement. Most of that is gone here. Instead, we have a lot of washy synthesizers, with some repeated patterns but much more simplistic compositions, and often electronic-sounding drums. Secondly, the dynamics have been significantly reduced - no more going from quiet as a whisper to full-tilt crush like on their earlier albums. Instead, we have a bunch of mellow snapshots that either remain at a constant volume, or start quiet and build only slightly. Finally, the compositions are not memorable. This is background elevator music. I think the time they have spent composing for movie soundtracks has affected their judgement on this release. Indeed, this could easily be a collection of movie soundtrack outtakes being presented as new band material. On the whole, none of the music is 'bad' or off-putting. It is just so neutral, arousing very little emotion. I have listened to this five times now, and I find it does not stand up to multiple listens, just gets more boring with each listen (I always make a point of listening to an album multiple times before I review it, as often the degree of musicality only becomes evident once one is familiar with the music). Go for their earlier albums (especially TEINACDP) if you want to explore this band. I give this 3.8 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which translates to 2 PA stars. (The cover art is great though, so it has that going for it).

The celebrated Austin quartet spent the previous half-decade doing movie scores, and on their first stand-alone album since 2011 the group appears stuck in that same, soundtrack mindset. In place of the expected "cathartic mini-symphonies" (their own words) the new album collects a random assortment of shorter instrumentals, each one attractive in its own modest way but together not adding up to an impressive sum.

Every track might have been a leftover doodle from an unrealized film commission, buffed to a spotless high-gloss sheen but hardly developed beyond the level of an impeccable demo. My apologies for using the lowest adjective in a Proghead's critical arsenal, but the dreaded m-word applies here: "The Wilderness" is a very mainstream album, tailor-made for wider commercial appeal with its less challenging, easier-on-the-ears Post Rock aesthetic.

There's nothing wrong with taking the low road, for a change of scenery. But the means to that end required the band to downplay all the uncanny magic that made their earlier albums so compelling. The title track is a good example, presenting a not unpleasant techno variation of the classic EitS sound, more effects-driven than usual but still evocative, up to a point. Previously the music would have risen gradually to a heavenly crescendo, instead of ending suddenly on an unresolved fadeout, well before the five-minute mark.

No album by artists this sensitive or intelligent is going to be a complete sell-out. But it's certainly the band's weakest offering since "The Rescue" (2005): a shallow wade into lukewarm waters from a group more accustomed to the raptures of the deep.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY started out under the name Breaker Morant in Austin, TX in 1999 but soon changed their name and wasted no time in releasing their first album HOW STRANGE, INNOCENCE in 2000. Originally only with 300 copies released in the form of CD-Rs, the album has since been remastered and released as a full-fledged album. I have this newer version and it even dons a much prettier album cover of a nice blue landscape with a little edifice and strange looking clouds hovering above.

While i love post-rock, i am quite underwhelmed by this debut. EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY implies some kind of explosive excitement in its band name but there seems to lack any such thing on this debut. In fact this is pretty much post-rock by the numbers and to me sounds like Mogwai light. The album incorporates a lot of the post but seems to leave out the rock on this one unlike their future releases. What we get are some nice and pleasant guitar riffs that play on and on and reach a climax but nothing on this one really satisfies.

This album was released in 2000 well after other post-rock greats like Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Tortoise were doing much more interesting things. If you are a fan of minimalism then you may like this one but i just find it a tad underwhelming. The variety is almost nil and the mood building episodes notorious of post-rock doesn't build many mountains, but considering this music comes from the moderately hilly landscape of central Texas, then i guess it perfectly suits the band's surroundings. A pretty average album in my book. 2.5 rounded down

The '01 album "Those Who Tell the Truth (...etc. etc. etc.)" marked a quantum leap forward in confidence and style for the Post Rock shamans from Austin, Texas, after their uncertain studio debut the previous year. But that sophomore effort still showed the stretch marks of a difficult gestation: stealing voice-over film monologues to underline musical points, and so forth. It would be another two years before the maturing sound of Explosions in the Sky finally matched the band's fanciful name: erupting into the west Texas firmament on a rapturous blaze of instrumental glory.

And once again I find myself apologizing for the hothouse flowers of my over-fertilized prose (hardly inappropriate in a Progressive Rock forum, you would think). I had already heard a few isolated selections from the album, on their page here at ProgArchives and at the band's own web site. But absorbing the entire thing in a single, uninterrupted sitting was a revelatory experience, by turns uplifting, mournful, triumphant, cathartic, elegiac, and devastating. It's no wonder my rhetoric turned purple in response.

On a strictly emotional level the closest kneejerk comparison would be to the majestic year 2000 GY!BE epic "Lift Your Skinny Fists (...etc. etc. etc.)", re-imagined on a more intimate and personal scale. There's an almost symphonic grandeur to the album that Beethoven or Wagner might have recognized and applauded, beginning with the nine-plus minute intro "First Breath After Coma": a brilliant title, by the way, for such transfiguring music. And yet there's also a disarming simplicity to the arrangements and performances, wistful and delicate one moment but overpowering elsewhere.

The music achieves its apotheosis in the awesome climax of "Memorial", rising gradually from a series of long, overlapping guitar sustains toward a pyrotechnic release of dramatic tension, before reaching graceful resolution in the beautiful coda "Your Hand in Mine". All five of the album's tributary movements combine into one broad river, flowing together more smoothly than any other EitS effort before or since. The writing is likewise more intuitive, and the balance of sound more natural: the expected bursts of fuzzed-out noise are less abrupt, and the drumming less reliant on over-produced boom-thud cacophony.

To be honest I wasn't expecting anything more than the usual Post Rock epiphanies, aglow with higher purpose but stuck in the same shining rut. The typically long-winded, moody yet hopeful album title; the lovely but reticent artwork by Esteban Rey (...Stephen King?); the chiming double- guitar configurations...all point to standard Post Rock style and usage. But musically it remains one of the defining albums of its kind: a desert-island essential in the remote Post Rock archipelago.

A word of advice, however: don't cherry-pick samples as I first did. Immerse yourself fully in the unabridged 46-minute aggregate, and (again, with apologies!) touch the wonder.

Their 2001 album wasn't the first by Explosions in the Sky. But I'm willing to bet they wish it had been, in retrospect. After an underwhelming debut the year before, the Austin quartet rebooted their career and inaugurated the new millennium by doing something more than simply recording and packaging another album. They succeeded in creating a lasting mystique for themselves, in the evocative Angel of Mons artwork and in the radiance of the music itself suggesting ideas of redemption, transcendence, and prophetic vision...classic Prog, in other words, despite the usual Post Rock trappings.

The aesthetic was inspired in large part by the films and philosophy of (kindred Texan) Terrence Malick, showing a similar deep reverence for natural beauty, inner truth, and a spiritual harmony far above and way beyond the petty metaphysical straightjacket of religion. The CD booklet includes a quote from Sean Penn's world-weary Sgt. Welsh in Malick's 1998 masterpiece "The Thin Red Line" ("...there ain't no world but this one"). And the filmmaker's influence becomes explicit in the song "Have You Passed Through This Night", with its awkward appropriation of a key voice-over monologue from the same movie (which already had its own emotive soundtrack, and didn't need any extra help).

That's a lot of thematic freight for one fifty-minute album of instrumental music to carry...even when divided into complimentary halves, corresponding (in vinyl terms) to Sides One and Two but here named "Die" and "Live Forever" (I doubt either was intended literally, or in a trite Born Again sense). Considering the band's uncertain track record at the time it may have been too much baggage, a little too soon. But they were learning on the job how to be more patient, in both composition and performance, slowly building their own wide-screen musical language using only electric guitars and very loud drums.

Later albums would articulate the band's collective vision better. The vernacular here was still a bit crude (Christopher Hrasky's cymbal-abuse borders on sadism). But this was where EitS found its voice. And that discovery might have been expressed in the unspoken reflections of another Malick voice-over, heard on an outbound troop transport as the battlegrounds of Guadalcanal recede over the South Pacific waves:

Oh, my soul...let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining...

Using the word "innocence" in the title was a modest way for the Texas quartet of Explosions in the Sky to appraise their own recording debut without saying "naïve" or "amateurish" (the latter not always a negative term, by the way). The band members don't even consider it their first album, but rather their "first attempt" at making an album, a subtle distinction printed alongside other mixed feelings and misgivings smack-dab on the label of the CD itself.

That almost apologetic attitude isn't entirely unjustified, either. For a band now celebrated as Post Rock icons it was an inauspicious beginning, which of course only makes it more attractive in an academic sort of way. Collectors and completists can approach it as a living embryo in the EitS fossil record, captured at the primitive, single-cell stage of its musical evolution.

The twin-guitar instrumental sound of the album won't be unfamiliar to fans. But the performances are tentative, as if the players were still getting acquainted with each other. You can expect a few goofed notes, not always played by mistake: in the halfhearted climax of "Snow and Lights", and during the somewhat awkward intros to "Magic Hours" and "Glittering Blackness" (the song titles already showing signs of what would later become a trademark visionary ethos). A few studio tricks were attempted, most likely out of curiosity: a random reverb effect here, some clumsy fuzzed guitar there, and so forth. And nobody told drummer Chris Hrasky that his enthusiastic cymbal bashing (in "Time Stops") would totally overwhelm the contributions of his bandmates.

It might be kinder in retrospect to hear the effort as the band's earthbound rehearsal before ascending into the sweet hereafter of upcoming albums. The hackneyed cliché about a journey beginning with a single step applies here; ditto the old maxim about learning to crawl before you can walk. The Explosions team was still on infant hands and knees while making this album, and unsure of its collective balance. But the young group was at least toddling in the right direction.