Ulrika Spacek – Expo
The band that nearly broke up made their most cohesive record. A decade of psychedelia, and this is where they end up: making you work for it.
London quintet Ulrika Spacek return with their fourth album “Expo”, out now on Full Time Hobby: their most structurally ambitious record yet, and the one where the electronic turn they’ve been edging toward finally takes hold.
Ten years in, Ulrika Spacek have earned the right to a left turn. “Expo” comes after a near-breakup during the sessions for “Compact Trauma” (2023), a label change from Tough Love to Full Time Hobby, and a solo detour by vocalist Rhys Edwards under his Astrel K alias. It also comes after a US tour that left marks, and after Edwards became a father, which tends to change what you find worth writing about. The result is an album that faces outward rather than in: touring, screens, isolation, the world you’re handing to someone who didn’t ask for it.
What changed structurally is the production approach. Edwards describes “Expo” as “a sonic patchwork that draws on a veritable database of samples”: the band built their own sample bank, extracted rhythmic frameworks from it, then layered live drums and guitars on top. The result isn’t hybridisation for its own sake. It’s a method that keeps the record from settling, that makes the analogue and digital elements rub against each other productively. Synthesizers and live percussion bleed into each other. Guitars fray into synthetic textures. Orchestral interludes soften a coldness that the record then deliberately reasserts. Dynamics rarely explode: they bend, shift in density and reorganise. The songwriting prioritises structure over release, which makes “Expo” a less immediate record than its predecessors, and a more rewarding one on return.
Edwards’ vocals are part of that structure rather than on top of it. His voice is often processed, pushed out of focus, used more as texture than as narrative lead. Rhys Jenkins’ guitar and Joseph Stone’s synthesizers blur into each other to the point where the boundaries dissolve mid-phrase. Callum Brown’s drumming does something similar rhythmically: elusive, complex, never quite where you expect it to land.
Thematically, “Expo” is more extroverted than anything the band has made before. Edwards’ lyrics oscillate between isolation and overexposure, between wanting community and the claustrophobia of digital life. No direct criticism, but a constant sense of fracture: contemporary reality perceived through phantom barriers. The album’s title is apt, and not just nominally. It’s an exposition of materials, but also of fragility in a hyper-connected and deeply lonely world.
What I keep noticing is how often “Expo” denies itself the release it’s been building toward. That refusal is the point, and it takes a few listens to appreciate rather than resist it.
“Expo” is not an immediate record, and it’s not trying to be. It asks for active listening and rewards it with detail that wasn’t obvious the first time. No deviation feels gratuitous, and even when the sound gets deliberately esoteric, the form stays legible. Ulrika Spacek have made something that holds together precisely because it doesn’t smooth over its own internal tensions.
