MySpace Trawl - Explosions In The Sky

Thursday. Not as exciting as a Saturday - or even a Sunday, for that matter. Probably because we’re still at work and dreaming of the clock hitting 5 o’clock on Friday so that we can all go home and have a groovy weekend.

That might mean getting slaughtered in the pub drinking horrible pints of cheap nasty lager or getting ripped-off in supposedly trendy nightclubs where the same shoddy pints of lager are sold to us at treble the price. Either way, it beats working. But Thursday is good for something. You’ll know by now! It’s MySpace Trawl, our handy dandy feature which each week prods you firmly towards the best music that MySpace has to offer. It’s a first for us this week - so far all of our featured artists have actually had some kind of involvement with their MySpace profile, either looking after it themselves or writing their own biography. But this week, our featured band – Explosions In The Sky - have absolutely bugger all to do with theirs. But this doesn’t seem to bother the band that much; they even give a link to this unofficial page on their own website. Crazy or what?

Brian May was recently reported to have gotten all pissed off with people pretending to be him on MySpace. But it's not doing any harm to anyone, is it? Er… we don’t think so. Either way, Explosions In The Sky are a million miles away from the sound of Brian May or Queen, though. Explosions In The Sky nicely fit in to the category of post-rock, which is a very beautiful creation. A lot of the time the sounds will come from guitars and maybe a bit of orchestral involvement. Slowly the sounds will build and build upon each other creating a gorgeous wall of sound which finally explodes into a combination of melody and emotion. Post-rock is pretty much an underground sensation but some of the more popular artists that use this sound are Sigur Ros and Hope Of The States [RIP].

Phew… Now that’s out the way, let’s get on to the music. Well firstly, hats off to the creator of this page. It's definitely got the most content out of anything featured thus far. If you’ve never had the joy of hearing of this group before, you'll be easily converted after visiting this page - there is literally everything you could ever want here, and more. Let’s just start off with the basics shall we? As per usual, there are four Explosions In The Sky tracks that have been chucked onto the site which you can listen to. This is usually the point in the feature where we’d try and describe the songs, like the vocals. But we can’t do that with Explosions In The Sky because none of the songs feature any vocals. Now before you all start to panic and race towards the back button on your browser, we need to promise you that just because the song has no vocals, it ain't shit. Honestly, hands held up high and we swear on our much-loved editor's life. 

One of the tracks here has been taped off the radio and bunged onto the internet, as a well-known and much-missed radio legend can be heard on it. First person to tell us which track and radio presenter wins a pen or something. Back honestly, despite the lack of vocals it doesn’t shift anything away from the sheer beauty of the tracks. If you can imagine the saddest part of a film where someone has just died or a romance has just been crushed, an Explosions in the Sky would be perfect to accompany the visuals. It's not sad music in the sense that it’s going to make you start hating the world and all the people in it. But it’s the emotion of the music that creates some kind of deep feeling.

Tracks that have been selected are ones that cover the band's entire career. While most band's careers start shaky and get better as they go, Explosions In The Sky began strong and have remained so over their career, which shows no sign off stopping. The four songs echo beauty and awe which you should really listen to fully appreciate, but what’s even better is a live performance. Links to bootlegs and official recordings of live shows are also here for you to watch and listen to.

Whilst they show a good representation of their live performance their really is nothing like seeing them live. In late 2005 they were special guests with Four Tet as he toured his new album around the country. When Explosions took to the stage their were a minority of people including this writer who were more excited to see the support then the main attraction. For probably the one and only time, a warm up act won the hearts of the audience and as they got in to the set the entire audience was silent. Nobody spoke a word as they lapped up the sounds of four blokes Texas, America. A small amount of press has been achieved by the band but it was kind of for the wrong reasons.

For the release of their 2001 album Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever, The album art shows an airplane with the caption "This plane will crash tomorrow." The belief arose that the album was released on September 10, 2001, adding to its coincidental mystique, but this belief is incorrect. The concept for the album art originated in 2000, and the album was released August 27, 2001 - an unfortunate coincidence. A new album has been recorded by the band apparently containing six songs ranging from three to thirteen minutes. We’re being told to expect it in February or March 2007. Something we can’t wait for. 

Read more: 

Unofficial Explosions In The Sky MySpace page

Official Explosions In The Sky Website

[story by Matthew Laidlow]