Flashback Review: Explosions In The Sky: How Strange, Innocence [B]

Artist: Explosions In The Sky

Album: How Strange, Innocence

Released: Jan 2000

Label: Temporary Residence Limited

Genre: instrumental post-rock

Purchase date: 7 Sep 2010

Format: mp3 files

Source: eMusic

How Strange, Innocence is the first album by this instrumental post-rock band from Texas. Explosions In The Sky is probably best known for the soundtrack to the 2004 film Friday Night Lights and for much of the incidental music for the TV show of the same name. I've been a fan for a few years now, and when this album popped up in my "recommended" list on eMusic, I decided to give it a try.

The band is known for painting aural pictures with cinematic grandeur, using tempo changes, dynamic changes, and mood shifts to great effect. While not as well-executed as the band will do in subsequent recordings, the music on this album is vivid, exhilarating, and can transport your imagination to other places. Never poppy, this is music that pulls you in.

It's not this band's best record, but I still recommend it.

Rating: B

Listen to "A Song For Our Fathers"

Album listing on Amazon

Album listing on eMusic

Review: If These Trees Could Talk: Above the Earth, Below the Sky [A]

Artist: If These Trees Could Talk
Album: Above the Earth, Below the Sky
Released: March 2009
Label: self-published
Genre: post-rock

Purchase date: 27 Jan 2010
Source: iTunes

Format: AAC files

I found myself listening to this instrumental post-rock album over and over again. The music is heavily layered with guitar, and has a mesmerizing complexity and wide dynamic range. Songs can start out spare and ambient, then build to a heavy rock crescendo, only to sonically disintegrate before your ears. This is a real "headphones" album: best experienced with your eyes closed in a dark room through high-end headphones. Outstanding music: at times intense and raw, others quiet and contemplative. The sonic theme is man vs. nature, but with no lyrics, you are left to fill in the storyline. I really loved this album, and continue to listen to it over and over again.

Rating: A

Listen to "From Roots to Needles"

Album listing at Amazon
Album listing at CD Baby
(Artist not available at eMusic at this time)