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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━𝐔𝐥𝐫𝐢𝐤𝐚 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐤 • instagram.com/ulrikaspacek
If all the world is a stage, then our performance is a lonely one. Reflected not through eyes but through screens ad infinitum, our audience – real or imagined – is no longer a burden but a need. Attention, recognition, validation: we trade our interior worlds for the thrill of public display. In a hyper-individual world, Ulrika Spacek’s fourth album EXPO offers an antidote.
Even as its five members have been pulled by tides of their own, Ulrika Spacek has always been a symbol of collective art. Despite a range of day jobs (experimental physicists, graphic designers, music producers) the collective pursuit is there in the shared dream logic of the music: the off-kilter melodies, jagged guitars and cirrus cloud atmospherics. It’s there, in all the things that are said and unsaid between them; there in the writing, producing and mixing processes they share in. And even as each of their parts moves toward a unified vision, it’s never more keenly felt than in the bigger picture to which Ulrika Spacek belong.
Whether it is Oysterland, the self-curated night the band began to platform artists of other disciplines in live music spaces; Total Refreshment Centre, the East London studio acclaimed producer [caroline, Thurston Moore, Spiritualized] / bassist Syd Kemp runs which connects the dots between the jazz scene and like-minded experimental artists; or their creative bleed as musicians and producers with Crack Cloud and caroline, the band’s existence is inseparable from its community. And though singer/multi-instrumentalist Rhys Edwards now lives in Stockholm, it only underlines the band’s absolute togetherness when they create with one another - they go all-in, even at personal expense, for the sake of the whole. On the melodic, cold-sweat fever of “Picto”, states EXPO’s manifesto: “It’s back to strength in numbers, count in fives.”
“Just as hyper-individualism makes the world a lonely place, making art by yourself is also a lonely place,” the band share. “When you work alone, you’re confronted by your weaknesses and your limitations - whereas when you’re in a group you play to the strengths of everyone. There’s something very comforting about taking creative risks when you work as a unit.” In an age of algorithmic predictability, EXPO embodies the thrill of the unknown and the particular human magic that comes with the pursuit of it.
Ulrika Spacek’s lyrics look outward – not by choice, but by necessity. Rather than their previous works which looked within, EXPO holds a mirror up to the world and captures a warped reflection. The songs were written this way because they were touched by the strange lands and minds of America on tour; because Rhys was awaiting the birth of his daughter and started to wonder about what kind of future she could inherit. On the dislocating “I Could Just Do It”, the lessons of the past left unlearned return to haunt us: “What prefab story leads you wrongly? / An old world warning, you don’t learn surely”. It anxiously blurs the lines between notions of apocalypse and observed reality; an indictment of how deep the rot has set in.
Musically, EXPO is a dialectic between analogue and electronic. Though their foundations are in the art-rock world - and though they are inspired by electronic elements more than ever - Ulrika Spacek are interested in the glitch that exists between the two. Their music reckons with human warmth and digital isolation, equal parts welcoming and altogether alienating. In many ways, the band express the tension which defines modern life. “Our music has always been a collage – a bit patchwork, sonically – but what makes this album a landmark for us is that we went one step further and made our own sound bank and essentially sampled ourselves,” the band says. They create their own doppelgängers in a world of almost-real, where the band appear as if in a hall of mirrors. Digital drums are sampled and layered upon real drums, and the effect is almost like birth in reverse - pulled from the ether and returned back to the tangible world.
Until now, the Ulrika Spacek sound was clearly defined across three albums. There was comfort in that, but there was claustrophobia, too. “Picto” marked a joyous beginning, the very first song to be written for EXPO where shiny new toys sparked new ways of thinking. They write as they record, and the question of how to play it live is a magic still-forming every time they tour. “Build A Box Then Break It” captures the spirit of EXPO’s creation. For a long time in its writing, they resisted guitars altogether, its panoramic sound propelled only by a chorus of drums and Farfisas (electronic organs manufactured in Italy in the 60s and 70s). Though fuzzy, modulated guitars found their way into the mix, they’re countered by the iconic techno synth Roland SH 101 which rules with ice. The tension between the two became the EXPO sound, unlike anything the band had done before.
“Square Root of None” was about “throwing ideas at a wall” during a biting Stockholm winter; one of the rare opportunities that Ulrika Spacek were in the same room together. The lyrics have a clinical exactitude, drawing on the language of mathematics and code. Together, they arrive at a solution; that acting in solitude equates to risk: “It’s slump or climb / In divisions of five.”
Never was the process more abstract and Pollockian, however, than with “Weights and Measures”. It was a complicated birth but became the band’s ultimate triumph. It’s beyond prediction, governed by laws of its own. The organic wrestles with digital; ecstatic and danceable across musical languages. And just when you think you know what’s on your hands, a James Bond-like bridge is unleashed – and the whole thing reinvents itself once again. It’s an embodiment of the absolute joy shared between them when they make music together, that there is levity to be found in shared creation in the face of all the heaviness that, for a while, they could leave at the door.
If art is to be exhibited, then Ulrika Spacek will ensure that it is art they make together; that even as the world becomes inhospitable to community, that their intentions are an act of resistance. “We make decisions for the greater good,” they state, “and we are greater than the sum of our parts.”
𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐓𝐁𝐀.
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𝐓𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 • hdfst.uk/e148976
14+ event (14-17s must be accompanied by an adult).
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Presented by Gravy Train.
𝐆𝐓 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬. • gravytrainbristol.co.uk
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