This is the fourth album from EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, the band from Austin, Texas, who dispense with the need for lyrics, making vast and epic soundscapes that surf beautifully in and out of focus in an abstract, almost progressive way. Using rock music’s basic ingredients and a whole lot of FX through which to communicate, this six-track oddyssey is haunting and reassuring all at once.
Delay-heavy drum kicks, big fills, and shimmering arpeggios can be heard as they unfold amidst some seriously spaced-out sliding distortion, rendering the process of thought as a huge blank canvas to be filled with seamless helpings of raw emotional power.
The band has an uncanny ability to paint pictures with music, making you see things from a multitude of angles, seemingly all at once as their mother ship probes its way forth on an awesome voyage of self-discovery, the impressive sound open to all possibilities.
‘It’s Natural To Be Afraid’ will be the much talked about track in this collection. Clocking in at just under thirteen and a half minutes, it could well be the ultimate play on fear, allowing the sensation to at first creep up on the listener like the gentlest form of paranoia. This is faced down and faced up to, and the most wonderful release can be heard as the mindkilling potential is dissolved to bring forth an untroubled soundscape that is seemingly free of darkness. Gentle pickup sounds twinned with a reedy ambience evoke shards of light from out of the depths, and oh-so-delicate cymbals signal a drum rolling sense of joy and freedom before the whole lot becomes reminiscent of a kind of cosmic reworking of the pastoral. Would it be blessed with the addition of the odd violin or three, it could easily be dubbed a modern symphony at this stage.
All of a sudden the blackness grips you though, and a drum-hammering freefall immersed in backstage kaleidoscopics has the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention in perfect tension that is felt in the pit of the stomach. Chaotic, relentless, and out of control, like a cycle of blind panic, the sweat runs out of it cold, as the horror subsides with a regressive bout of reverse track uneasy calm.
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‘What Do You Go Home To’ follows, shapeless, floating and lost in an ethereal mist, high keys locked in a looping sense of disorientation as the high hats add some sense of the ground underneath our feet. Bass-driven, this glides helplessly lost and homesick as the tempo heaves and falls with the tom-toms.
The troubled festival sounds continue with a thumping percussive pattern and jagged guitars emulsified in the fog, underscored by the five-fathom depth off the bass charge. ‘Catastrophe and the Cure’ fair crashes into the back of the head to imitate the messy tangle of the brain in confusion, before maracas herald the soothing antidote that comes in the form of shining and distinctive riffs.
Genteel in places, classical in others, sonic to the core, and drawing upon the energy of progressive rock’s groundbreaking capacity to stretch the imagination, the whole ambient orchestration is something to be surrendered to without a doubt. There are undoubted treasures here, set amongst breathtaking mental scenery.
It’s music for those with vision, stunning stuff with endless possibilities ready to hand in a sound-twisting recreation of the mind’s inner workings. A huge record. Make of it what you will ladies and gentlemen, make of it what you will.
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