Showcasing various songs on their album End released in the latter half of 2023, Explosions in the Sky performed a continuous hour and a half of music for their crowd of adoring fans at The Wiltern. The group’s combination of classic rock instrumentals and machinery sounds used as refrains, outros and downbeats elicited a group of twenty to seventy year olds to leave their homes after long days of work on a Wednesday night. Determined to get closest to the stage as possible, fans entered the theater an hour before the opening act. A sense of camaraderie evidently formed as fans following the band since the 2000s told fans who were attending their first Explosions in the Sky concert that night about the projects the band has worked on and former concerts they’ve attended.
Once the band took to the stage they opened with the song “First Breath After a Coma ” which began with the repetition of a cycle of four beats decreasing in volume from an EKG monitor. Accompanying the EKG monitor, sounds of a heartbeat were included along with the motif of faint crescendos and decrescendos of cymbals which acted as a moving component of the song. The creation and use of resonant and isolated sounds by the guitar and bass players allowed the backtracks to perfectly fuse with the live music, creating a harmonious environment.
Songs like “The Birth and Death of Day” and “Yasmin the Light” exhibited more of Explosion in the Sky’s musical intelligence as the audience got to witness the band create an enlightening sound by layering fundamental musical elements like scales, the shredding of a bass, and the science of vibration.
The surges of pinkish red light which overtook the stage and illuminated the auditorium every time a downbeat was played in “Your Hand in Mine,” which a lot of the audience also knew from the film “Friday Night Lights,” was an incredibly moving experience. As the band members swayed to the rhythm while playing the melody, their silhouettes would appear for a moment, making the entire experience feel even more surreal.
All photos by Colin King.
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