“But into my miserable brain, always concerned with looking for noon at two o’clock" - Charles Baudelaire (1869)
The Foreign Department is the second album by Astrel K, the solo project helmed by Stockholm-based British ex-pat, Rhys Edwards. Those already familiar with Edwards’ work will likely know him for fronting the cultishly great Ulrika Spacek, and given he operates as the principal songwriter in both projects, much of the same hallmarks of his cathartic, elliptical songwriting are present in Astrel K. Nonetheless, The Foreign Department feels like a rubicon moment of sorts, and the album that Edwards has unconsciously been working towards his entire creative life.
As a title, The Foreign Department offers an instructive guide for the listener, framing a life-in-transition/artist-in-exile document that maps two impromptu moves in twelve months for its songwriter: the first from London in pursuit of a relationship, the second between homes in Stockholm as that decade long relationship then suddenly dissolved. Indeed, diffusion, dissolution and reconstitution feel like appropriate touchstones for its recurring themes. Written amidst the flux of two states, at once isolated from home and then any established emotional anchor, the resulting eleven tracks came to represent a precognitive search for shifting identity and with it forming an unwittingly biographical record. It's commendable and somewhat telling that during this shake up, Edwards somehow landed upon his most realised and original work.
With a former life stripped away, there emerged an opportunity to reinvent a sense of self through art, now not just as a writer, but a composer also. Developing the confidence to arrange songs in ways he'd previously considered off-limits, while also taking cues from the opulent string and brass arrangements of records like Mercury Rev's Deserters' Songs and Death of A Ladies Man by Leonard Cohen, Edwards enlisted a range of performers to bring to life the mini-symphonies forming in his head. Perhaps it's inevitable that an album written while facing the consequences of being alone would eventually ossify around the process of bringing people together.
For all its troubled origins, The Foreign Department is a remarkably warm sounding collection. Edwards' lyrics are typically knotty and neurotic, dancing around the poetry of quarter-life anxiety, but the music itself is often joyous and even uplifting, the combination expressing that neat duality of melancholic euphoria. Edwards sings variously of crises, "torrid pieces of art", of "houses on fire" and not "having the guts for it", yet these troubling sentiments are framed by seemingly incongruous swelling strings, chirping horns or motorik percussion, creating that sense of pushing forward or floating above, of wrapping your troubles in dreams, a salve for the moments when you get a bit too much for yourself.
Lead single, 'Darkness At Noon', likely captures this all best. Named for the French idiom "midi a quatorze heures", the maddening idea of attempting the impossible for the sake of some greater possibly pointless cause, it directly grapples with the opposing notions of wanting and not wanting, of being here and being there at the same time. The conflicting and impossible self. It’s something Edwards addresses in the song at perhaps his most open, opining, “I know I want to be seen, but I hate most of what comes out of me”. And yet here is, putting it all out in the open and on the line, the dialectics of his enlightenment up on show.
credits
released March 8, 2024
LYRICS
1 Heavy Is the Head
I like the sentiment, but don’t have the guts for it, in an institute of ignorance, i want something mortal, i don’t believe in flawlessness, in all such pandemonium, an ugly little artefact, well i’m gaunt to-let and modal, in a not so average quarter, a new deal in the morning.. what? i figured it out! bite sized entropy, prized fight energy, half of half not three, cut from cloth but clean, out! out! out! i’m out! slow it down to barely moving, heavy is the head when using, but come to think of it, cling to it! floundering coward comes to flower like a coiled spring, but on the contrary it could be just what i think of it.
2 Darkness At Noon
A torrid little piece of art it was, welcome to the family but take a seat by the door because, it’s a counterfeit kind of miserable, combine expectation with cynical cause, when shame came right around the corner, a brother of mine though i hope not a daughter, i climbed out, out from this water, a janus faced problem makes no sense at all, cause i know i want to be seen, but i kinda hate most of what comes out of me, it’s a crisis of belief, i’m somewhere in between. I can’t remind you much more than i do, when it’s darkness at noon, memory ruined, a curtain call, find something new. I want to be part of it, in a new reality i’ll shed the bitter peel, can you name a colour you haven’t seen? They say history rhymes and it doesn’t repeat, did i fall far from your expectation or reinforce most of what you thought of me? They say the blessed are the calm and the blessed are the free, but a pot bellied pig of a man can be these, well i fold on bended knee, when you give me a slither of warmth under feet, it’s a crisis of belief, i’m somewhere in between. i can’t remind you much more than i do, when it’s darkness at noon, memory ruined, misery is an open book, the sound of a pencil, a disguise i wear thin, when it’s darkness at noon, memory ruined, a curtain call, find some-thing new.
3 By Depol
There’s a strange feeling in the group tonight, might have reached the point of getting out alive, if anything goes, won’t you try find it? Bottle it up, perpetual sliding, come on! lately i know i don’t resemble much of what you had in mind before, there weren’t no crumble or even change of name by deed poll, if anyone knows where my life went? Swallow it up, a continual scroll..
4 Brighter Spells
Try! a crisis averted! i’ll cross the line again, a crisis averted a child from the future shall write again, a curse! yourself! But let in the light, let in, on concrete blocks, on spiral stairs, more self assured in brighter spells, the cat came in, the moment’s here and it’s murderous! I lost my foot on final stair, tumbled back to where i came, the hallway sleeps another kväll, on andra våningen is where brighter spells and times of trouble, entwine, then hide, then end. A conscience commuting, a dead end or one way route? The context is worthy, astute observation of yellow suit, they cast a line, a call to bite, a reel to turn, a revert to type, a table turned, a lesson learned and its murderous. You lost your foot on final stair, tumbled back to where you came, the hallway sleeps another kväll, on andra våningen is where - maybe you’re right, but that’s no way to go about it, I’m likely a light that was off but now is on..
6 Birds In Vacant Lots
Got to find the bridge, to the houses on the hillside, i’ll join the play-out kids, the birds in vacant lots call back home, the brightest and the finest fall, the prize isin the slightest step forward, a husband in a hole, doubt is on the brow now, a fridge freezer of old, the calendar from last year still on the wall, god is in the detail, no! My costume falls to pieces once more, the house is fire, what you done to mend the soul? Hi jinx comes to reach you once more, the house is on fire.
7 The Foreign Department
Contract proposed, the terms and conditions say i’m liable, a vibrating equation, well times squared, multiple theories but none clear, they’re quite interfering as the world turns to salt, i smelled an accident, the foreign department, a closed shop scenario, time creeps achingly forward, with notes, sums and difficult formulas, the moment i knew, an incline came true, accused of a prude but i’m more than you truly.
9 A Rudderless Ship
Suit yourself! It’s open plan, problem found, you feel yourself falling, a torrid night, in battery light, the fruit and flies, trouble comes calling, swipe routine, loading screen, try to feel something rewarding, but cost, inflation, time or wages? A loss in waiting? It’s south to the brink! I didn’t want to make a fuss, but peace of mind comes with talking, a button you’d not planned to push, a rudderless ship is sunk or wandering. Sara septic! Non-synthetic, you tell your friend then you tell your boss, post traumatic, once infatic, amounts to this, and it comes to what? Goodbye i’m gone. Please the world in irrelevant circles, a picto loss, the foot of the precipice, so lay your heart on another flat surface, so long, surely? Home’s in the next place. You pushed the button now and i can’t help but think it’s a kind of murder.
10 Daffodil
I hope your friends stay good to you, you look so happy when they are with you, just like a daffodil that came in spring, but you still grow without me close.
11 R U A Literal Child?
Are you a little disturbed? With noises from outside? And has it occurred ‘r u a literal child?’ We’ll substitute the moon, with bed sheets and white light, a fraud is in the room, a hunch into truth a ghost into view, i’ll wrap this up, with contact failing, guess you're always on the wrong side of my brain when once more, fall short one could say. She laid her doubts upon formica table, an ominous cloud seems to hangover her, we’re apart at the seams, but together at least, slow choke? Concede? I won’t! But the closer i got, the tragic thing - the sad sinks in, i lose my fight...
Astrel K blends sonically adventurous sources (film music, post-rock, indie electronica) with intimate vocals and melodies
to craft a sound that's both comforting and challenging at once. The solo project of british Ulrika Spacek member Rhys Edwards enjoyed the patronage of Stereolab, whose revived Duophonic Super 45s label issued the project's debut album, Flickering i, in 2022....more
supported by 27 fans who also own “The Foreign Department”
i'm a big fan of ulrika spacek and this does a good job of doing something a bit different. got a dreamy 50s vibe mixed with 80s indie. love it. j_hindsight
supported by 21 fans who also own “The Foreign Department”
There are few artists that come into the fold to seek just by letting all out, present an on going discover of what is better than this, what does the inner child in us want and why not just allow us the pleasure to humour that feeling so reassuringly positive that it will help in the growth of ourselves.
Maybe I'm exhausted but this band down to right amazing. comb_jelly
The songs on the latest from Mellorine range from bright indie to surging post-rock, centered on earnest vocal melodies. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 19, 2022
Melodic alt-pop in the vein of Soccer Mommy is driven by winding guitar lines and augmented with dreamy shoegaze elements. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 14, 2021
