Expo

The fourth album from Ulrika Spacek, EXPO finds the East London experimental collective branching out in a couple ways: Musically, it employed a "sound bank," wherein members recorded fragments of material and later essentially sampled themselves for its layered, analog-digital sound. Thematically, after exploring interior realms on three albums, events like touring the U.S. and impending parenthood prompted bandleader Rhys Edwards to turn his lens outward with lyrics like "Eyes across America/A place in fracture/A place in fracture" ("I Could Just Do It"). EXPO was self-recorded at Total Refreshment Centre in London and at Stugion in Stockholm, with Edwards and Joseph Stone each playing various instruments including guitar, Total Refreshment Centre owner/producer Syd Kemp (caroline, Thurston Moore, Spiritualized) on bass, Callum Brown on drums, and newcomer Rhys Jenkins (Hot Mass, the Arteries) on guitar. It begins with "Intro," a brief sound collage that combines city-street noise, recorded dialog, synthesized and human ambient humming, sporadic drum and cymbal taps, and minimal guitar interjections, the instrumental components of which take over and expand on "Picto." While seemingly ephemeral, the intro does a good job of resetting listeners ears for whats to come, as even though the album is typically structured and melodic, songs are loaded with sonic detailing. Some of EXPOs later detours include "Build a Box Then Break It," a song written from a drum beat rather than with guitars. The track does add synths, guitar, and vocals as it progresses, but the groove is at its heart as Edwards delivers lines such as "Just walls built on pavement/A frame not a door/A concrete persuasion/It stands then it falls." They play with time signatures on the jazzy, electronic music-influenced "Weights & Measures," and are perhaps at their catchiest and most post-punk-like on "Expo," one of multiple tracks that includes existential lyrics about technology. Simultaneously messy, intricate, and atmospheric almost throughout (it does come into focus from time to time), EXPO can be like trying to hear through phantom barriers, but attentive listening is rewarded, and the project succeeds in reflecting a very contemporary fractured reality. ~ Marcy Donelson