by Álvaro Molina (@alvaromolinare)
How do you sort the recording of an album when everything seems to be shutting and places feel alienated? Ulrika Spacek’s latest album, Compact Trauma, arrives as a sharp, psych-blowing, krautrock-flavored manifest of a band coming back to surface after a self-imposed banish and overcoming the strangeness of its own ethos.
On their previous records, the Reading five-piece welcomed every jagged guitar sound ranging from the usual suspects: The Velvet Underground to Sonic Youth, Slint and everything in between (and further away). Drenched in fuzz, echo and reverb, Ulrika Spacek’s output became a darling for psych-heads on both sides of the Atlantic and underground aficionados of the darker edges in acidic rock. Part of that sound was owed to the band’s beloved shared-house-studio KEN, in Homerton. As the beast of gentrification in East London hunted new preys, the band lost the space in 2019, just as the writing of Compact Trauma began to take shape.
Homeless and discomforted, Rhys Edwards, Rhys Williams, Joseph Stone, Syd Kemp, and Callum Brown suddenly shifted to a professional recording studio somewhere in Hackney. The band was already coping with stress and exhaustion from touring and the pandemic started to turn everything bleaker. Lockdowns due to The Disease came and went and the handbrake was applied; members were separated and whatever they were able to record for their new album was shelved, left in a shadowy corner of distress. It was through that very wound that light started to enter. Compact Trauma reflects on that strange glow, much like when shutters turn up after a confusing, tiring nightmare. Motivated by the comeback of most of the music industry, Ulrika Spacek were drawn back to revive their recording sessions.
If The Album Paranoia (2016) and Modern English Decoration (2017) ruminated on murky psychedelic noise and motorik-informed rhythms, on its third album Ulrika Spacek find a broader, cleaner, and shinier edge. It’s modern psychedelia in a crispy clear transmission, one that doesn’t fear to explore the elegant, retro living room grooves (“Lounge Angst”, “No Design”), pop-go-experimental melodies (“Accidental Momentary Blur”, “Diskbänkrealism”), or even tense and loose moments, where lacerating guitars pierce through soft and dreamy rhythms (“The Sheer Drop”, “It Will Come Sometime”).
Throughout Compact Trauma, the unconventional and unusual song structures pave the way for mostly familiar themes and lyrics. Dread, panic, and discomfort are reachable, almost tangible feelings emanating from the metallic overdose of guitars and feedback-laden melodies on most of the tracks. The other phase (and face) of fear reveals itself on “Stuck At The Door,” an 11-minute epic propeller of groovy, sinuous, funky highway to the stars, one in which “the worst of it’s to come”. Is it?
Trauma is a tricky, often paralyzing experience, more so if it’s compressed in a short period of time or squeezed into oneself with self-doubt or delirium. However, trauma can also turn out to be a creative vanguard for finding new lights and make something out of it. How come? Resurfacing after exile and unfamiliarity, Ulrika Spacek managed to pick up the recordings stashed and almost left unfinished and unheard by everyone. Compact Trauma is envisioned as a collective reflection of shock after The Disease, one in which the band start looking for new familiar places, however uncomfortable they might have seemed.