by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Three months into the year and EXEK’s latest album, Advertise Here, remains an absolute favorite over here at Post-Trash. The band’s sixth LP is mesmerizing, floating between dissonance and dream like bliss with such natural progressions it mimics life itself. Released via Castle Face Records (Oh Sees, Nolan Potter, J.R.C.G.), the Melbourne based quintet leans a bit into the psych side of their side, disorienting their melodies and rhythms, where nothing is exactly as it seems but everything lands perfectly as intended. There’s a deviance to the lyrics but with a delivery that’s ever so nonchalant, the picture blurs and it’s that kind of mental chaos that really lends itself to the band’s own warped breed of artistic post-punk. With deep rhythmic grooves (that often feel motorik), layered samples, and airy synths, the music feels suspended in air, grounded only by the occasional moments of noise and the bleak lyrical landscape.
Aside from the album’s stand-out singles, “Parricide is Painless” is another highlight, on an album that’s spoiled with them. The song opens with a slinky bass and clipped snares, the entire atmosphere given a Lynchian lounge treatment, but rather than drift in its ambiance, EXEK keep it persistently driving. The synths join the pulsing framework but soon detach and devolve into their own shapes, bleeding over the rhythm at will, adding nuance and melodic shifts both harsh and welcome. Albert Wolski’s vocals work to keep the song grounded, even as the synths do their best to upend. While the melody is near jangly, the lyrics are ruthlessly dark, a song about, well… parricide, and “neighborhood scum” that murder their parents while keeping what they believe to be a clean exterior to the world. It’s fairly brutal but you’d hardly know it, and that’s the EXEK magic.
The video, directed by Alexandra Millen, also sits somewhere between surrealism and dread, without alluding to anything sadistic, Wolski seems to represent the song’s subject matter, a man without family, living his life as he goes to the movies, the bar, and home. We see him joined by mannequins everywhere he goes, the absence of family becoming simulation that he’s not alone… and perhaps hasn’t done anything terrible. It’s tension relies on the lyrics, but the video wonderfully leaves you draw your own conclusions.