Chris Hrasky is like many Americans, feeling "tense, worried, baffled, and waiting for this nightmare to end", he says.
The drummer of Texan post-rock outfit Explosions in the Sky is preparing to leave on a tour that will go through Hawaii, Australia, Japan, and Singapore, but with the tumult of the Trump presidency upon him, his thoughts are close to home.
"Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in history, he's very much disliked by millions upon millions of citizens," Hrasky says. "There's definitely not a feeling of this Trump juggernaut, of this newfound era of nationalism. There's millions of dissenting voices here and I plan to be one of them."
As a band, Hrasky continues, "we've never tried to be explicitly political. We've gone about our business in fair and honest ways. Now we've crossed over into some new realm. It really feels like something is at stake, that there are values that need to be protected, decisions that need to be fought back against."
Long before the current circumstances, Explosions in the Sky were drawn into the election circus last February, when a campaign video for Ted Cruz used their song Your Hand in Mine without permission. "We sent him a cease and desist letter and they stopped using it," Hrasky says. "They used a song, they did not ask permission, they did not pay us.
"In 2008, the Obama campaign used a song and they did ask permission, and they did pay us. So, the difference is amusing to me: the 'socialist' Obama actually seemed to value our property and paid us accordingly, whereas the 'capitalist' Republicans didn't seem interested in the market value of our work."
Given their music is instrumental and filled with that favourite of song-placement qualities, "build", Explosions in the Sky music is in high demand for use as soundtracks. This ranges from the "kids making videos on YouTube" to songs used in shows and movies, to four full scores for films – two each for directors Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor) and David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche and Manglehorn).
Hrasky recalls going to the cinema to see Friday Night Lights in 2004. "We were on tour in New York City, we finished soundchecking and we got in cabs to go to Manhattan, to some theatre where we could watch it. It seemed strange that we were in this big movie and we were going to go sit in a crowd of people and watch it, but none of them would know who we were. It was a pretty cool feeling, at a time when we were still pretty young as a band. It's one of those moments that legitimises what you're doing to your families. My parents were like 'oh, okay, now we get it!'."
When composing soundtracks the band feel like they're making "background music", Hrasky says, "to bolster this other thing that already exists". When writing their own music – their seventh album, The Wilderness, came out in 2016 – they are creators from the ground up, fashioning their own sense of narrative.
"We want the songs to feel like a story, that they have an arc, build and recede with a sense of movement throughout. Not that we ever have storylines, but we talk about the emotions of songs, or parts of them; should they feel scary or joyful, and how can we get them to sound that way."
As instrumentals, however, they're open for listener interpretation and Explosions in the Sky have lost track of all the stories they've been told about what their music means to listeners and the events they've soundtracked.
"It really runs the gamut, from friends dying or getting divorced, to getting married or the birth of a child," Hrasky says. "It's so great, obviously, to have your music enter their lives in that way. We never wanted to make songs that might just come on in the car when people are driving, we wanted to make music that meant something to people."
Explosions In The Sky perform at the Melbourne Recital Centre on February 20 and 21; and the Sydney Opera House on February 23.