Adam CR wrote:

MrFood wrote:Epoch Shattering Moments In Modern Music.

Number 1: Explosions In The Sky's first practice session together.

Guy 1: "Let's do a Slint band".
Guy 2: "Ok."
Guy 3: "Ok."
Guy 4: "Ok."

Fixed.

Holy shit, hahahahahaha

Top 5 Most Slint-Esque Bands

1. Explosions in the Sky
2. Mogwai
3. Do Make Say Think
4. Slint
5. June of 44

Inspired by America: The Book

yttam naboh wrote: I really only think the reason they've become a bit derivative is because so many terrible bands are ripping them off and so personally my desire to hear them has waned.

This is partially true. Spend enough time combing myspace and you'll find quite a few EITS/Mogwai/Mono ripoffs. Last I checked there were I think just under a bajillion. But what's worse is that EITS is ripping themself off and the kids are buying it.

yttam naboh wrote:When I first heard Those Who Tell The Truth... I was astounded at how spacious, unrushed and melodic they made instrumental music. Sure Slint were spacious sounding but Slint had a hypnotic inner tension which drew you in whereas Explosions do catharsis through expanse... or sommat. Their new album is okay but I hope they will continue to open up people's ears to a different way of making music.

Well said. Slint used space and tension in a way that's been very hard to replicate. EITS uses space and catharsis the way a cheap horror film does scare scenes. I saw Mogwai sometime last year and it felt like I was at The Film Festival Of The Most Predictable Films. Everytime they started a song all soft and quiet and whatnot I felt like saying, "OOOh, I betya I know how this one ends!"

The first I heard of them was a review in Magnet that said "Mogwai and Godspeed called and want their music back."

When I first heard "Those Who tell the Truth," I loved it. I liked not having to wait 20 minutes like you do with Mogwai and GYBE. The album after that was pretty decent. Then they reissued "How Strange, Innocence" and again, wow I loved it. Everything since then, meh. The Friday Night Lights thing was boring. The Rescue had that song with them talking about their van and that was about it. The new album sounds like every crap song they didn't put on the previous albums.

If you haven't heard it, check out How Strange, Innocence."

I've toured with these guys. As people, they are NOT CRAP. And they are wholly sincere. A lot of the criticisms levelled at them here are fair enough I guess, but to claim that they don't believe in what they're doing or that their music is cynically manipulative is plain wrong.

I've had fairly lengthy conversations with all the members of this band about the music they're making and why they're making it. What inspires them most is the very tight friendship between them all, and that's a pretty beautiful thing. Maybe the way they're trying to express that is pretty tired, but it is at least earnest. This is 100% non-hipster bullshit-free stuff.

None of the above is a reason why you should like them, of course. Me personally, I'm pretty sick of their sound - I think they were really at their best on Those Who Tell The Truth. Don't get the Slint comparisons though. In fact, I find them pretty stupid - don't get this instrumental guitar band playing music based on dynamics = Slint rip-off malarkey.

Noodles wrote:Does the front guy thanking everyone for their time etc. come across as really fake to anyone else?

No, it's not fake.

Noodles wrote:Maybe thats just me being a miserable bastard

Quite.

simmo wrote:In fact, I find them pretty stupid - don't get this instrumental guitar band playing music based on dynamics = Slint rip-off malarkey.

I think that says plenty about the sheer number of bands doing this stuff.

Sure, you can argue the toss about whether Explosions in the Sky sound more like Slint or Mogwai or GYBE or Hair's Alive! Save the Jackal :: for Tomorrow! or Ravens in the Dark or Blind Divers Lancing Dolphins or whatever the Slint-band du jour is, but ultimately they all owe their existence to Slint.

They are a 'Slint-band'.

The genre has a gene-pool that dwellers of the Forest of Dean could legitimately ridicule.

Champion Rabbit wrote:but ultimately they all owe their existence to Slint.

You're kind of splitting hairs on this one -- everything most of us, as people on this forum, musically creates owes itself to Slint in one way or another. They challenged the use of tension and dynamics in rock music in an important and meaningful way. This set the course for a lot of music afterward, but they don't sound anything like EITS or Mogwai to me and I think their use of both doesn't relate.

It's the same way a lot of people compare Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. They're doing something similar in set up, kind of, in that not many had tried guitar symphonies and pieces before them, but their music is totally different in what it's trying to achieve.

Champion Rabbit wrote:

simmo wrote:In fact, I find them pretty stupid - don't get this instrumental guitar band playing music based on dynamics = Slint rip-off malarkey.

I think that says plenty about the sheer number of bands doing this stuff.

Sure, you can argue the toss about whether Explosions in the Sky sound more like Slint or Mogwai or GYBE or Hair's Alive! Save the Jackal :: for Tomorrow! or Ravens in the Dark or Blind Divers Lancing Dolphins or whatever the Slint-band du jour is, but ultimately they all owe their existence to Slint.

They are a 'Slint-band'.

I find it weird, this idea that because one band does something first that that somehow any band that does anything remotely similar is reduced to being a cheap imposter. Surely Blues music would have been screwed if this had been the popular attitude in ye olden days?

I like the idea that Explosions in the Sky is Texas' answer to Mogwai.

kinda like a Beatles/Beach Boys thing.