Explosions in the Sky have always employed evocative titles for their emotionally powerful instrumental rock tunes. But just because a song is referred to as something poetic like “Remember Me As A Time Of Day” or “First Breath After A Coma” on the back of their CD jacket or on the computerized words that pop up on your computer screen doesn’t mean the song started out with such a noble name.
“Even after they’ve been given their proper titles,” says drummer Chris Hrasky, “when we’re at a show and we’re like, ‘OK, what songs are we gonna play tonight?’ we’ll refer to them by our working titles. For instance, the first song on the new record, called ‘Last Known Surroundings,’ we never call it that. We call it ‘Monkey Doom.’”
“Monkey Doom”?
He laughs slightly upon hearing the title repeated back to him, perhaps realizing how such a silly title stands in stark contrast to the intense instrumental odyssey that is the Explosions’ signature.
“The sample that’s in the beginning or the drone thing has this weird little jumpy sound and for some reason it conjured images of monkeys for us, when we were first working on it,” he explains. “It’s just stuff like that where we’ll usually call it what we were calling it while we were writing it as opposed to what it actually ends up being titled.”
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