Explosions In The Sky

Within the bubble the man’s cigarette smoke smells as sweet as the freshest roses; on the inside looking out, the throng that moves, as if in slow motion, to what’s unfolding – sonically, aurally, whateverly – upon the stage at which we all stare, isn’t a distraction but an embellishment. We’re all here, together; it’s just that our little corners of the world are individual to the core. Each of us hears this that little bit differently, although we’re all privy to the same sequences of notes and chords and beats and bass guitar booms. Because my soul is different from your soul, and yours from his, and his from hers. All the way around and back down.

A couple kiss on one of the venue’s balconies; it’s a moment of tenderness that reflects its soundtrack well, and the night’s surroundings – walls of deep red topped by a massive, spinning glitter ball that sends darts of light here there and everywhere, piercing the hearts of all and sundry – complement everything that’s unravelling around the bubble impeccably. Four men playing music in a London venue equals exactly nothing new – men come from all over, Texas isn’t unique – and purveyors of the maligned subgenre of post-rock certainly aren’t at a premium. You can’t cross a street in central London without passing some hoodie-up-and-bearded gent with a guitar slung over his shoulder and ambitions of Godspeed proportions prickling the hairs upon his neck. This, though, is different. Really. In a way that words can’t truly, accurately convey. ‘Til now everything that’s been written has been reactionary, yet the whys and hows – the actions of our four protagonists – are not clear. It just _is_.

Leave the irritating ‘creative’ types in the shadows – some bands know their trade and master it, without care nor desire to push through to another side that may well be nothing but black and lifeless, cold and lonely. Some bands can clutch the listener, the audience member, and draw them in close, like it’s only them and you in a room of a thousand plus who are but blurs on the very periphery of your vision. They’re smudges, stigmatisms; they’re here but not here, within this perfect sphere of otherworldly acceptance and repetitive tolerance. Heck, the repetition only hammers home this music’s perfection: its structure, though simper than its awesomely powerful execution belies, is easy to comprehend and digest. It tastes more brilliant than the first time you tasted grapes, or crumbly mature cheese, or a perfectly baked birthday cake. Everything’s subjective though, of course.

Objectivity can wait outside – this is not a house for doubts and heckles, for stage invaders – although one slips the net – and turn-away bar talkers. It’s a sermon, that’s what’s unfolding; everyone has a higher power that speaks to them a certain way, and right now each and every man and woman within Koko’s walls is celebrating the return of a quartet of kings. A quartet of musicians whose control over the emotions of total strangers is utterly beguiling, even for the most hardened of forever sceptical critics.

The bubble bursts sooner that expected, and a hail storm of footsteps chatter and clatter their way through the few square inches that, minutes earlier, comprised the private land of an individual enraptured. Absolutely alone in a crowd of faces familiar and foreign. Fucking there. Although where you were during Explosions In The Sky, only you know.

Photograph by Lucy Johnston