INTERVIEW:  

As we met with the four members of the band Explosions In The Sky, we found out that they were simple, humble and sincere. We evoked the myth surrounding their second CD as well as the reasons why they started to write music. Finally, they proved to be very collaborative about sharing with us their last musical discoveries…

Infratunes: For a start, I would like to come back to the “myth” surrounding your second CD entitled "those who tell the truth shall die, those who tell the truth shall live forever" according to which the CD was launched the day before Sept. 11th. A lot of people found the title extremely “prophetic”, especially given the name of the band “Explosions in the sky” and even more troubling, the words featured on the art cover were "This plane is gonna crash tomorrow". How did you react to this? Where there any consequences to this troubling coincidence?

Chris Hrasky: Well, part of what you heard is indeed a “myth”. This CD was not launched the day before Sept. 11th, but two weeks before. However, it is true that our CD was recently released and that we were touring at the time. We took it as a very sad coincidence. When it happened, it was awful in the States, people were traumatized and we did not really get any feedback on our CD. But, it was the last of our concerns then. When I think back about it, it all seems merely what it really is: a mere coincidence. We are no prophets! It was all very incredible and weird.

Infratunes: But it did not cause any problem to the CD or the band?

Chris: I think it did cause some problems indeed. A number of college and university radios could not air our CD because of its title, or because of our name. But we were on a list long of a thousand songs, then… In so far as we can talk about any inconvenience, this is about the only one I can think of. But on the other hand and far from being proud or happy about it, our name got more exposure because of this event, because we were right in sync with what was happening in the world at that time. I guess you have to take good and bad from every thing, but this was really a terrible day for the entire world… All we have to do now is to play music and hope that things will get better for everybody.

Infratunes: We can say that it was not a very good period for the launch of your CD since Americans were maybe looking for a music more uplifting, something more directly joyful…

Chris: But we try to make a more uplifting and cheerful music, maybe not happy in the conventional sense, not festive, but I would like the audience to get more than melancholy or sadness from our music, because there is also a lot of joy, triumph, and feelings that lifts your spirits more than they bring them down.

Infratunes: We can feel that your last CD, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, is much more leaning toward what you describe, maybe more cheerful, is it in reaction to all this state of affairs?

Chris: I don’t think it was a reaction to anything in particular, but mostly in reaction to what was happening in our lives as individuals. We wanted to evoke the whole spectrum of emotions that a human being can feel. Each person can feel them but at variable intensities depending on where they are in their lives. In "those who tell the truth…", we were feeling somber, sadder and we were filled with dark emotions, but in The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, we were not really feeling all this. Maybe we felt freer to focus on something more beautiful, on more joyful melodies. But we took what came up, and therefore it was not necessarily intentional. All we can say with respect to our music is that it expresses what we feel very deep inside of us. The preceding CD was made at a time when our mood was more somber because we were trying to reconcile our desire to write our own music and our respective works. The last CD was written at a time when we where much happier and I think that this had an impact on the outcome.

Infratunes: Anyway, each and every one of your songs on your CD is a story in itself. For instance, "First breath after coma" is the story of a guy who wakes up from a long coma by rediscovering his first love and the beauty of the world, and at the end his fears reappear. “Six days at the bottom of the ocean” is inspired from the Kursk, the Russian submarine which sank with its crew… How do you write and compose? What comes first, the scenario or the music?

Chris: It can go both ways, sometimes we start with composing part of the music and, in order to help us to compose the whole song, we talk about the story or images that come to our mind. It really helps us in our writing process. In the end, images inspire our music as much as the music brings images.

Infratunes: Where do you take your inspiration? Movies, news events, and so forth?

Chris: We are very much inspired by cinema and literature, but our major source of inspiration is everyday life. The emotions that move us, everything we feel, what happens in the world, all this altogether assists us in our writing process. I don’t think that we are influenced by bands in an intrinsic sense, but there are a lot of bands that we love to listen to and that we admire, but really, our inspiration comes from somewhere else.

Infratunes: It is very cathartic then…

Chris: Yeah definitely…

Infratunes: The way your band is structured, i.e. as a rather “classic rock band” with guitars, a bass and drums, boosts your sound in an incredible fashion which often leads music critics to compare Explosions in the sky to bands having 7 to 10 musicians on the stage. For your future projects, would you be interested in adding new musicians or instruments?

Chris: First of all, thank you! To answer your question, I don’t really fancy anybody joining the group, but more instruments could be added or some instruments could be withdrawn! I am generally very happy with the fact that the four of us only are able to produce this wall of sound… No, really I don’t see who else could help us do that…

Munaf Rayani: That’s right. First of all, I don’t think we could play with another person, and I don’t think that this person could tolerate us more than five minutes. Rehearsals can be very frustrating, we fight a lot, you see… All we want to do for now is to play music, the four of us, with the instruments we know how to play.

Infratunes: Were you friends originally?

Munaf: Yes, we can say that we were and still are best friends.

Infratunes: Let’s talk about the term “post rock”, which is quite controversial. First, do you approve this category and do you feel some connection with this trend?

Munaf: For me, it’s just a categorization and it does not mean much. There are so many bands that can be categorized that way. Same thing for pop music, so many bands fall into that category without having anything in common whatsoever. And the same goes for bands labeled as “post rock”. But at the same time, if people feel more comfortable saying, “I love this group, it’s Post Rock, this other group is also Post rock, so let’s see what they sound like…” I don’t mind and I understand.

Chris: With respect to our roots, it’s quite clear that with the music we play today, Mogwai and GYBE were in a way the pioneers of the post rock we hear today, but even before them, you can refer to other stuff…

Munaf: Yeah, like Slint, which already played that type of music 15 years ago, as well as Cocteau Twins, Cure maybe (laughs), I don’t know…

Infratunes: What are the bands that you feel close to, musically speaking, or that you are friends with?

Munaf: I would say that we get on very well with Trail of dead, they brought us on their tours many times and it’s a band that we feel relatively close to and which inspires us. When you play rock and you travel the world, you end up meeting a lot of great bands, which is quite cool. From Mogwai to The American Analog Set that live in the same city as we… I think that there is a good rock community nowadays, it seems like everybody is here to push people toward the top, there is no “competition” to be at the front of the stage, and it’s quite pleasant. Everybody has his own idea about what he wants to do et how he wants to do it, and the fact that we took a particular path doesn’t necessarily mean that a person who is close to us wants to go the same way as us.

Infratunes: With which band would you like to tour, be it for reasons of taste or friendship?

Munaf: I would like to tour with The Shins…

Chris: Yeah, The Shins

Mark Smith: Radiohead!

Chris: The Beatles! (laughs)

Munaf: No, but there are a lot of other small bands we would like to tour with, such as The Books or Four Tet, but his one is already quite well known… Apart from that, I don’t know, I’d like to tour with GZA, RZA of Wu Tang, and jay Z, if he wants to tour with us, it’s OK with us… (laughs)

Infratunes: Britney Spears…

Munaf: No, not Britney Spears, maybe Justin Timberlake? Who knows…

Chris: He only knows how to play “Cry me a river" (laughs)

Munaf: That’s right, it is the only song he knows how to play…

Infratunes: Ok, what are the CD, books, movies that you would recommend to the visitors of Infratunes?

Chris: Listen to the The Shins!

Munaf: Yes, definitely, The Shins, and I strongly recommend “The wind up bird”, two guys from the States, from two different city, they’re very very good…

Infratunes: What’s their style of music?

Munaf: Rather ambient, nice melodies, quiet and soft, with samples and plenty of floating guitars. And do not misinterpret the way I describe their music, it’s not boring at all, it’s really very pleasant!

Chris: Apart from that the last CD of Madvillain is a killer, Juana Molina (on Domino records) from Argentina is an incredible artist, a sort of cross between Cat Power and Iron & Wine… Speaking of Iron Wine, it’s all very recommendable! I want to tour with Iron & Wine! We listen to so many bands, but these are our favorite in a nutshell and I would say first and foremost: The Shins!!

Infratunes: What about books and movies?

Munaf: Yes, you know it’s funny but this band I talked about, “The wind up bird”, there is this book from Haruki Murakami, entitled “The wind up bird chronicle”, and I imagine that that’s where the band took their name from. It’s absolutely great, he writes in a very strange way while succeeding at being very emotional and his writing is very simple and easy to read, but when you come near the end, you stay high! (laughs) or you end up crying! There’s also Catch 22 from Joseph Heller, which is a very good satire on the madness of the war.

 

Translation into English from French by Sabine Thuilleaux