Exek

Good Thing They Ripped Up the Carpet is the latest LP of deconstructed enchantment from Australian post-punks EXEK. One reaches for the word dreamy but gravitates to phantasmagoric, which also means to change or shift, such as a scene composed of many elements. That describes the technical birth of this LP, too: side A is new material that was written and recorded in 2020, while side B is a compilation of tracks that have been used to contribute to other people’s releases.

Since the second half is an amalgamation of tracks across both place and time – the oldest is from 2015, while the newest hasn’t been released yet – it only made sense for side A to mimic that variegated quality. Hip-hop, krautrock, ambient, straight PiL worship, new wave romantic pop, field recordings from Japan, and a solo that tips the hat at Black Sabbath’s “NIB” all figure into this wide-ranging collection of songs. EXEK tends to be classified as post-punk, but they excel most at the lesser-punk elements of that descriptor; trippy dub, meditative motorik, and self-sampling as sonic propellant.

Menacing textures, eerie and introspective moods, majestic lyrics, manipulated voices, bending time and warping pitch. Good Thing They Ripped Up the Carpet braids together all these disparate threads, a funhouse ride through refracted memories and future worlds

- Ana Gavrilovska