Big Bend (An Original Soundtrack For Public Television)

Description

After nearly two years of a world tour following the album The Wilderness (2016), Explosions In The Sky paused to reflect on the past. Celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band with a pair of remastered reissues of their early classics – How Strange, Innocence (2000) and The Rescue (2005) – they embarked on a series of memorable anniversary concerts in 2019. It was during this time that Explosions In The Sky was approached to create the soundtrack for a new documentary about a place they were very familiar with as native Texans: Big Bend National Park. This documentary, Big Bend: The Wild Frontier of Texas, premiered on PBS in the United States as well as on various networks in other countries in early 2021. The one-hour film closely follows the lives of native animals amidst vast aerial views of the iconic desert landscape that constitutes one of the world's greatest natural wonders. The band scores these images with an inspired, melodic, and meaningful arrangement of acoustic guitar, slide guitar, strings, piano, bells, and drums that is as vibrant and diverse – and vast and solitary – as the place it represents. Big Bend (An Original Soundtrack for Public Television) takes this enchanting soundtrack and recontextualizes it as a standalone album. Brief pieces have been extended and transformed to form a beautiful album that recalls some of the most magical and memorable moments in the band's history. Big Bend: The Wild Frontier of Texas is a film that explores the past and present through a vast and complex landscape that still holds countless mysteries to discover. In Big Bend (An Original Soundtrack for Public Television), Explosions In The Sky continues a similar approach to their own past and present, finding inspiration in all that remains to be discovered.