‘We’re Explosions in the Sky from Texas,” said Munaf Rayani when the band took the stage late in the evening, he then adviced us to ‘grab the hand of someone you love and join us as we go to the sky’, and it was about the only thing they said on stage, beside thank you at the end, since they didn't even stop playing between their instrumental numbers.
In front of the Lone Star Flag exposed on stage, they played their conundrum of moody soundscapes, which did not seem to have any direction, despite some motifs that were regularly coming back. There were violent thunderstorms, and of course several loud explosions between quiet moments during their symphonic compositions.
The Texas band stretched the time with their wall of sound, and there was a special moment at the beginning of their set when Rayani held his guitar above his head and the light reflected in it, matching the sound a few times, as if it was making fireworks in this shoegazing experience.
Munaf Rayani, Mark Smith, and Michael James were bent on their instruments most of the time, giving the feeling they were fighting against the elements, or dancing a ballet with some invisible violent wind.
As they were playing I was looking sometimes around, seeing that people were watching, standing still and hypnotized, except the two kids in front of me who had taken Rayani’s advice seriously and were making out during the whole set.
But, during the whole set, I was wondering how the hell each of them was possibly finding his way through this complicated sonic maze.