Explosions In The Sky


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Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die (2002) , 6.5/10
The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003), 6/10
All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone (2007) , 7/10
Take Care Take Care Take Care (2011) , 6.5/10
The Wilderness (2016), 5/10
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

Explosions In The Sky, a quartet from Austin (Texas) fronted by guitarists Mark Smith and Munaf Rayani pushed the wild dynamics of Godspeed You Black Emperor to new heigths (sonically speaking) of epic instrumental post-rock. After a tentative self-released How Strange Innocence (2000 - Temporary Residence, 2005), the proper debut album, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die (Temporary Residence, 2001), indulged in oblique strategies of sudden self-annihilation, in traumatic stylistic u-turns: the pounding ecstasy of Have You Passed Through This Night? (unnecessarily ushered in by two minutes of spoken vocals), the massive riff of Greet Death (followed by interstellar guitar tapestries that, after three minutes, relinquish all power to a gentle Eastern-tinged melody), the mellow strumming of Yasmin the Light that explodes in a terrifying guitar freak-out and then resumes again as if nothing had happened. The 10-minute tinkling fantasia Moon is Down (that, unfortunately, picks up speed and volume in the last three minutes) sounds like King Crimson's Moonchild for the age of hyper-terrorism, stately while dejected. The highlight is the closing 12-minute With Tired Eyes Tired Minds Tired Souls We Slept, that strives to find a balance between guitar impressionism, Glenn Branca-esque minimalism and Indian raga, and, after a fibrillating crescendo, ends up recycling upon itself.
Chris Hrasky, Munaf Rayani, Mark Smith and Michael James had mastered the praxis of improvisation/composition that had been appropriated by post-rock after being refined over the centuries by classical music (the fantasia) and by jazz (the jam).

The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place (Temporary Residence, 2003) is relatively upbeat and way less catastrophic. That means pieces such as First Breath After Coma and The Only Moment We Were Alone are not quite as menacing as the ones on the debut, and the requiem Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean is actually quite moving, and Your Hand in Mine is almost tender. But they remain, fundamentally, copycats of Godspeed You Black Emperor's most basic technique. The general feeling of dejavu is redeemed by Memorial.

The six instrumentals of All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone (Temporary Residence, 2007) fullfilled the promises that had only been sketched on previous Explosions In The Sky albums. For better and for worse, Explosions In The Sky had become an assembly machine of carefully-executed post-rock dynamics. The eight-minute The Birth And Death Of The Day barely hints at an epic riff but prefers to indulge in a lulling duet of simple gentle melodic fragments. It suddenly erupts in a loud, colossal shoegazing tidal wave propelled by massive drumming with one guitar's soaring, wavering hymn-like melody pierced by the other guitar's petulant fits, an exercise in post-psychedelic call-and-response. The 13-minute It's Natural to Be Afraid opens with a refrain that sounds like an ancient music-box against the menacing backdrop of a buzzing noise. However, they both die out and are replaced by a pastoral flute-like moan and a mellow dual-guitar lullaby. The song dies again and restarts as an even softer and looser improvisation. Finally (four minutes from the end) it picks up steam in earnest, chirping wildly like a bird at sunrise. The most insistent piece is the eight-minute Catastrophe and the Cure, in which the wavering counterpoint of the guitars runs its course without discontinuities.
Not only are they impeccable pieces that could be used as instruction manuals for apprentice post-rockers, but they also bridge the gap between one transcendent form and another of instrumental music. The impressionistic vignette Welcome Ghosts is the psychedelic equivalent of John Fahey's instrumental transcendent acoustic folk fantasies. What Do You Go Home To is dissonant chamber music, with the guitars emulating piano and cello.
A (tedious) bonus disc contains an entire remix of the album by several artists.

Take Care Take Care Take Care (Temporary Residence, 2011) probably marked a decline in inspiration, temporarily masked by a sophisticated exercise in digital noir arrangements and by the exuberant imagination of drummer Chris Hrasky.

Mark Smith then formed Inventions with Eluvium. They released the albums Inventions (2014) and Maze Of Woods (2015) and the EP Blanket Waves (2015) containing two lengthy compositions, Blanket Waves (14:12) and Hearing Loss (11:52).

After scoring several film soundtracks, Explosions in the Sky returned with the single Disintegration Anxiety and the album The Wilderness (2016) that contains humbler songs, compared to the past, and more electronic sounds, but basically sounds another film soundtrack, not particularly cohesive and certainly not revolutionary.

(Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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