The Foreign Department

ストックホルムを拠点に活動するイギリス人ミュージシャンRHYS EDWARDS率いるソロ・プロジェクト、ASTREL Kのセカンド・アルバム!
映画音楽、ポストロック、インディ、エレクトロニカを親しみやすいヴォーカル & メロディーで融合させた安らぎに満ちた音楽性が魅力的です。

Working under the name Astrel K, Rhys Edwards of the indie rock group Ulrika Spacek made a splash with the 2022 album Flickering i. Maybe not a splash exactly, more like the sound it makes when one slips into a warm bath as candlelight flickers on the bathroom wall. It was intimate and fragile, built on subtle instrumentation, subtle electronics, and Edwards melancholic croon. Songs were influenced by sources as disparate as the tender sweep of Broadcast at their quietest and the sleep-induced moodiness of slowcore groups like Bedhead, and the whole album had a kind of warmth and inner glow that felt like a shared secret. With the second Astrel K album, Edwards turns that all on its head in many ways. While the songs are still small moments of emotional disclosure wrapped up in careful singing and precise lyrics, the music surrounding them has gone technicolor. Inspired by albums like Leonard Cohens Death of a Ladies Man or the late-90s work of Mercury Rev, Edwards likewise takes an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach in order to push the emotion of the song to its natural limits through the use of strings, horns, synths, piano, and massive amounts of echo. Its a choice that mostly works, as Edwards manages to hold his own against the high-tide whoosh of sound, holding down the emotional center with all his might. It might take the listener a couple of songs to come to terms with the idea that, unlike on the first album where songs often calmly crawled to a closer with a sign, here they might end with masses of strings sawing away or steel drums pounding or clouds of echo filling the sound spectrum. There are times, too, when it comes close to the more standard kind of indie rock Edwards seemed quite keen to avoid previously, but thats not a bad thing since he proves able to turn those tropes into something exciting (as on the churning "A Rudderless Ship") or sweet (on the swaying retro-soul-adjacent ballad "Darkness at Noon"). Mostly, the record sounds like a deluxe version of Flickering i, where Edwards has delved deep into his paintbox, pulled out all the colors he can, then applied them with just the right style and shading. The extra layers of echo and haze work wonders on the albums more psychedelic numbers like "Brighter Spells," the zinging noises that pierce the chunky chords of tracks like "Heavy Is the Head" are exhilarating, and Edwards use of piano, which pops up on many songs, never strays into mawkish territory since its always surrounding by swirls of sound. The whole album is a perfect blend of whispered intimacies, heart-tugging melodies, widescreen production, and perfectly chosen instrumentation that shows that Edwards is able to succeed whether the setting is as lo-fi and contained as Flickering i or as big and expansive as the setting is here on The Foreign Department. ~ Tim Sendra