Inchoate
That’s the best word I can think of to describe the Austin-based band Explosions in the Sky, whom you may remember from the Friday Night Lights soundtrack.
Dictionary.com defines “inchoate” as “not yet completed or fully developed” and “just begun; incipient,” words that aptly characterize the way in which most songs from this band seem to begin as nothingness and to blossom steadily into complex sonic architectures. It is as if each song, having been seeded and fed by the nibbling waters of guitars, drums, and bass, slowly gathers itself and begins to grow, until it shimmers into being before our eyes and ears.
That is true of the following song, titled “First Breath After a Coma” (from The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place [2003]). Through instrumentals alone, it tells the tale of an awakening consciousness becoming alive to itself and branching out into the world of thought after a long absence.
[note: to watch the performance of the song, you’ll have to click play, click the forward button once, and sit through a very loud, but mercifully short, commercial for Fabchannel. Sorry about that. I think it’s worth it.]
