All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone...

Apologies for the distinct lack of bloggage recently, as you can imagine my last few days have involved sorting out the mess from the previous couple of weeks including a rather interesting may ball experience that facebook later taught me involed drinking 7 glasses of champagne in just under two hours and then mixing drinks all night whilst going on fairground rides. Messy.

So I'm going to easy myself back into blogging by focussing on one artist for today, one I've mentioned before and will undoubtedly mention again. They'll always make my top 5 list of bands, please welcome to the stage... Explosions In The Sky.

So a little history on the band first. EITS originate from Austin, TX in a country called America and how cool is this, the state motto is "Live Music Capital of the World". Austin has a reputation as a creative and diverse area and of course is home to the incredible annual SXSW festival, promoting new artists from around the world as well as showcasing upcoming material from giant acts. To illustrate my point, this years festival featured performances from Los Campesinos! who have featured here before and R.E.M. Basically, one whole street in Austin turns itself into as many music venues as possible and then put on gigs until the early hours. One day I'll go.

Anyway, Explosions formed in 1999 based as all great are, on a stunning and emotional live performance. Consisiting of three guitarists and a drummer, the band create soaring instrumental music that ebbs and flows through a variety of moods to generate whatever images you can imagine. Debut album How Strange, Innocence oringially outed on only 300 CD-R's but due to immense demand, the band reissued the album on mastered CD's. Featuring stunning tracks such as A Song For Our Fathers and Remember Me As A Time Of Day, the album is atmospheric with its heavy use of reverb on all instruments and also the mirroring of guitar lines on an acoustic guitar to introduce a softer edge to the tracks.

2001 saw the release of Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever probably my least favourite Explosions album. The band incorporate distortion into their sound out of nowhere and in a big way, attempting to genertae angst and claustrophobia to the tracks. However, the songs seem to lose direction and feel unnatural. It is important to undesrtand that the average EITS track is 6 or 7 minutes long but all feel like they progress and journey through a theme. This just didn't happen for me.

2003 was the year that saw Explosions step up a notch through their release of The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. Guitarist Munaf said the album was their "attempt at love songs" and this is realised perfectly in the instrumentation, the song titles, the production, everything falls into place to create the perfect mood with brooding lead lines, crashing drums and perfect climaxes and calm moments. Right from the start of the album, First Breath After Coma dictates the mood of the labum by compunding delayed lead lines on top of each other, dropping to sultry quiet moments before rising again. Clocking in at over 9 minutes long, its a journey that has only just begun. The Only Moment We Were Alone builds on the elative mood already created with the consistent yet tempered drumming, bells and complimentary guitar lines. Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean provides a short relief before exploding towards the end, snare roll after snare roll indicating the emotional outburst the band are about to perform. Memorial is the rain drenched ksisses after the storm with stripped down instrumentation and smooth bass lines. To finish a perfect album, that's right i said it, Your Hand In Mine demonstrates the band's love of setting a mood through delaying guitars, the sound of the harmonising guitars echoing around you is indescribable.

And so my Explosions tour de force begins. 2004 saw the release of the film Friday Night Lights which involved an almost entirely new soundtrack composed by Explosions. The film is a bit slow (unlike the incredible TV series) but the imagery and the soundtrack are incredible together, sites of bare wasteland and epic sunsets are accompanied by EITS twiddling away creating some of my favourite music ever. The album also saw the introduction of strings to the mix which perfectly complemented their instrumental style. Stand out tracks include An Ugly Fact Of Life, To West Texas and Do You Ever Feel Cursed. The album also features a track callled Sonho Dourado by Daniel Lanois that is just brilliant.

And so we reach 2007 and All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone. The album also featured an extra CD with remixes of the tracks by incredible artists such as Four Tet, Adem and The Paper Chase. The album also introduced piano to the fold for the first time, especially evident on What Do You Go Home To? with arpeggiated chords and delay used in perfect harmony. The Remixesa are more reworks and as expected, Four Tet produces another incredible version.

I saw Explosions at Koko promoting this album and front row centre was the perfect place to be. The band have a furious passion live, experiencing each live performance by themselves whilst working as a tight unit, improvising and elongating tracks. The only words spoken all night by the band were "Hello, how are you guys? This is pretty incredible, our last show in London was a while ago and it wasn't to this many people (2,434) I'll tell you that. My hands are shaking, we're Explosions In The Sky from Texas USA". And that was it. For over an hour and a half, the band said nothing, didn't communicate with the audience, no break, no encore, just music. It was genuinely breathtaking. Like I cannot describe how.

Enjoy this 20 minute set from Reckless Records store and honestly, please check this band out, they deserve more recognition than they could ever acheive. At least watch 2 minutes and witness the change in mood and energy from the drummer and Munaf, just incredible.