| CD REVIEW Explosions in The Sky |
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Band : Explosions in The Sky What immediately drew my attention about this Austin (Texas) based band, was its name. I actually even though it was a new band too, an illusion which was shattered (to my great pleasure) when I went a-browsing on the Internet for additional info on the instrumental Post-Rock quartet. The story of this band starts in February 1999 when three longtime friends from West Texas (Mark Smith, Munaf Rayani and Michael James) responded to a flyer put up by drummer Chris Hrasky (who'd just moved into Austin from Rockford, Illinois) and agreed to meet him at a pizza place. They discussed movies and arcana, and agreed to meet the next day with their instruments. Over the following months they picked the bandname Breaker Morant, then went for the current one...coming from a comment Hrasky made in reference to the fireworks when they left KVRX on the same night they played their first set and recorded their first track “”Remember Me As A Time Of Day” (would be released on a compilation later). They then set about recording their 2000 debut album How Strange, Innocence, which they pressed onto 300 cd-Rs and distributed during live performances. Although the tracks on the album were largely out of tune, many were those who appreciated the music's elaborate guitar work with its cinematic feel, and somehow or other, footage of the band rehearsing made it into the short film Cicadas...which won an award at the Austin Film Festival. Meanwhile, our foursome discovered they liked playing together, so that's what they continued to do, and in doing so they got fans among other, already established, Austin based bands. One of 'em sent a copy of a EITS live recording to Baltimore based label Temporary Residence Limited with a note saying “This totally fucking destroys,” and the decision to try and sign the band was taken before half of the session had been heard. EITS agreed, and TRL delivered the band's sophomore album Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever in late August 2001. The album's artwork (an airplane with the caption “This airplane will crash tomorrow”) got the band some misplaced media attention following the 9/11 events. At one point Michael James was detained in an airport as a security threat, having to explain why the words “This airplane will crash tomorrow” were written on his guitar! By the Summer of 2003 the band had been experiencing trouble getting new tunes together that they liked, and in order to avoid distractions moved away from Austin for a while, relocating to Midland (whence 3 of the guys came), Texas, where some of 'em took on day jobs to make ends meet, and where they jammed most of the evenings and nights in an effort to write new material. Still, it was only after a night's visit of the desert (listening to music from a boombox), that things fell together. The next night they started the writing process of 3rd album The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, returning to Austin to record the album with John Congleton in June, with a November release. Next, the band was contacted by Brian Reitzell to write the soundtrack for the 2004 movie Friday Night Lights (music by the band was also used in the television series by the same name, as well as in other series and commercials – for detail, check the band's page at Wikipedia, whence this article was largely synthesized). EITS needed only 8 days to write and record their 2005 album The Rescue. Part of the TRL Travels In Constants series, the album was originally only available at the band's shows. Their last album prior to the new one, was 2007's All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone. It was available as both a one-disc and two-disc release, the latter containing remixes by several artists. It was the first album by EITS to make the charts, both in the US (#76) and the UK (#58). Which brings me full circle to the new album, which took the band about 4 years to finish. Reasons why it took 'em so long are given on the info sheet we got along with our download promo copy of the album: one of 'em got married, one of 'em had two kids, one of 'em had panic attacks, one of 'em took classic guitar lessons, one of 'em restored a 1888 piano, one of 'em had a serious illness (and luckily also a recovery) in the family, one of 'em attempted (but did not complete) the P90X program, one of 'em was obsessed with the new album getting 17 shorter songs, one of 'em was obsessed with the album sounding like a dream, two of 'em couldn't get to sleep most nights, and two of 'em wake up early in the morning unable to get back to sleep (obviously, this made for schedule problems). Eventually the guys had a weekend shut-in sleepover at one of their houses, in which they wrote music, saw movies, and generally threw around ideas, of which they recorded at least 50 demos. At one point in the last 4 years the guys got so frustrated at not finding their turn in what they wanted out of the music, that they decided on taking an hiatus, calling it a sabbatical. A couple of months later (beginning of 2010) they were back at it, took a good look at all the demos to try and make some sense of things, and eventually found the theme they were looking for was already there. “...One part became two parts, a new guitar line made one part come alive, an added tambourine made another sing, things started to fit together in ways we couldn't have planned. One song was finished, and less than a week or two another song was finished. The rest followed over the next 6 months. All the songs came from the demos that we had worked on in the previous three years, demos that we had got away from, and then come back to, and then expanded...”! The six tracks on Take Care... all show the characteristics of a band having come to terms with itself, with the necessary patience to linger enough on a calmer passage before exploding into more fierce soundscapes. Still, even at their heaviest, the guitars sing rather than scream, and the cinematic feel is never quite completely put aside. Track lengths vary from 3 ½ (the album's shortie “Trembling Hands”) to just over 10 minutes (album closer “Let Me Back In” , which seems to have some unintelligible background “vocals” in the opening passage) and although there's only 6 tracks here, the album nevertheless lasts a respectable 46 minutes. I'm afraid that in order to hear some of the new album's material, you'll have to make due with the samples usually provided by the trusted online sales sites. For full-length versions of tracks off earlier albums, check the “albums” section on the band's own (www.) explosionsinthesky.com, or the band's MySpace page! Personal appreciation: took me a while to get into the drawn-out calmer passages, but following a couple of listening sessions I came to understand that this is an album I'll wanna listen to again during hot summer evenings, when I'll be sitting on my home's porch, a cool drink close at hand, and the cd-player programmed for continuous play! Give me half a chance to perform that plan, and the album stands a good chance to end up in my year-lists! 95/100 Tony. |