It sounds counterintuitive, but the best bits of the most recent Explosions in the Sky album are the ones that sound the least like Explosions in the Sky. That’s not meant to disparage any of the records that came before The Wilderness, mind you. Each has been excellent in its own way, showcasing the Austin, Texas–based band’s stirring brand of postrock, replete with both delicately wrought guitar interplay and meteoric regality.

The Wilderness is an altogether different listening experience. Case in point: “Logic of a Dream”, which moves through a number of different passages, from cosmic-hymnal ambient drones to a motorik-lite groove. See also “The Ecstatics”, which starts with a foundation of looping synthesizer arpeggios and clattering percussion but slowly grows into something as grand as any other entry in the Explosions in the Sky catalogue.

Reached on the road in Saratoga, California, drummer Chris Hrasky admits that figuring out how to pull the new material off on-stage was no easy task.

“A lot of it is just people playing multiple instruments in the same song,” Hrasky tells the Straight. “We’re using samplers, which we’ve never done before in a live setting. So it’s a lot of work for each guy in the band. It definitely took getting used to. We rehearsed for months, working on new stuff, figuring out how exactly to pull it off. It took two or three weeks of shows before it started feeling kind of like muscle memory and second nature, which is kind of what you’re hoping for when you play live, to not have to think too hard about what you’re doing or to be too uptight about it.”

Hrasky says that, in spite of all the extra effort it has entailed, he was happy to make an album that forced Explosions in the Sky out of what he calls its “default setting”.

“As a drummer, I did not want to do any of the things that I’ve sort of been associated with, drumwise, on this record,” he says. “Even guitar-wise, we just wanted to do something that felt stranger, and maybe evoke something different than the past records, and maybe end up in a few less sports montages with this record than with previous ones.”

He laughs when he says that last part, but he’s not really joking. Due no doubt to the dramatic—and sometimes downright triumphant—nature of its work, the band has placed songs in everything from the video game Major League Baseball 2K12 to an Adidas commercial featuring Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose.

Explosions in the Sky’s music is most often associated with football, however. The band wrote and recorded the score for the 2004 high-school-pigskin flick Friday Night Lights, and a number of its songs were featured on the TV spinoff, which ran for five seasons.

More recently, Hrasky and his bandmates scored the feature films Prince Avalanche, Lone Survivor, and Manglehorn. Don’t expect them to put their sounds to moving pictures again in the near future, though.

“We’ve had to turn some down because the record came out and we’re touring for two years,” the drummer notes. “When it comes down to it, the records are always the priority for us. Soundtrack stuff is fun and interesting, and I hope to do it again at some point, but it just depends if something comes up that we’re interested in and seems like it could make sense. But until 2018, we’re probably just kind of passing on those sorts of things. I mean, it depends—obviously, if Paul Thomas Anderson calls us, then yes, we will do it. But he’s got Jonny Greenwood, so I doubt he’s going to be calling us anytime soon.”

Explosions in the Sky plays the Commodore Ballroom on Sunday and Monday (September 4 and 5).