Explosions In The Sky

Hailing from Texas, the four-piece instrumental outfit Explosions in the Sky has earned widespread recognition for emotionally cathartic and dynamically charged rock instrumentals as well as its extensive body of film-scoring work. Known for ferociously powerful concerts, the ensemble was positioned in its early years as the emerging force in brooding, build-driven post-rock in the vein of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Over time the quartet rose to become one of the style’s biggest commercial successes, appearing across numerous movies, television programs, and games while also composing original scores for multiple feature films. Their wordless atmospheric guitar textures remain strikingly expressive, while the constant dialogue between guitars and percussion lends dramatic tension even to the most minimal pieces. Critical recognition arrived with the 2001 release Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever; the 2011 album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care showed the group probing both sonic and emotional dimensions with care, and the 2023 effort End fused sweeping melodies with electronic exploration.

Comprising guitarists Mark Smith and Munaf Rayani, bassist Michael James, and drummer Christopher Hrasky, the band secured its debut release on Temporary Residence Limited after a single partial listen to the 2000 CD-R How Strange, Innocence, which American Analog Set had forwarded along with the note “This totally f*cking destroys.” Their first album to reach wider distribution, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever, followed in the second half of 2001.

Following the introspective third album The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place in 2003, the group supplied an evocative score for the 2004 film Friday Night Lights, a drama situated in their native Texas. Strong demand prompted Temporary Residence to issue How Strange, Innocence commercially for the first time in 2005; that same year Explosions in the Sky added the mini-album The Rescue to the label’s Travels in Constants series of limited EPs. Their fourth studio album, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, arrived in 2007 and became their initial entry on the Billboard Top 200, reaching number 76. By the arrival of the fifth album, 2011’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, an expanded audience placed it inside the Top 20. Two years later the band collaborated with fellow Austinite David Wingo on the soundtrack for David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche. Additional scoring projects for Lone Survivor and Manglehorn preceded the sixth full-length, The Wilderness, in 2016. They later wrote and recorded the music for Big Bend, a PBS documentary concerning Big Bend National Park in West Texas, with Temporary Residence issuing the accompanying soundtrack album in 2021. The seventh studio set, End, appeared in 2023; its title alludes to the close of a relationship or to mortality, yet the record does not mark the group’s conclusion.