Prove The Mountains Move

Description

For just over a decade, EXEK has quietly established itself as one of the most hypnotic bands on the planet, evolving and maturing from album to album, gradually revealing itself without ever losing that inscrutable yet essential strangeness that has made them so successful. On February 27, the Melbourne post-punk band (comprised of singer and bandleader Albert Wolski, guitarist Jai Morris-Smith, drummer Chris Stephenson, synth wizard Andrew Brocchi, singer-trumpeter Valya YL Hooi, and bassist Ben Hepworth) will release *Prove The Mountains Move*, their seventh album and first release on DFA. As Wolski puts it, it’s “a bit more epic” than anything he’s recorded thus far, a lush and resolutely melodic collection of surreal pop that delights in contradictions. “This album is experimental in its construction,” Wolski explains, “but it doesn’t necessarily sound like it.” And for good reason. The work began on a cold afternoon in June 2023, when Wolski and Stephenson found themselves at Melbourne’s Pelican Refill Studios to record drums—their ritual for starting any composition. Wolski then returned home and began exploring the recorded rhythms and breaks, letting the drum sounds guide him toward melodies and bass lines. He looped, layered, and laid the groundwork for what would become *Prove The Mountains Move*: “I feel good when I’m tinkering alone, like a mad scientist,” he says. “I also liked pressing record without a clear idea. More often than not, it led me in an interesting direction that my conscious mind probably wouldn’t have explored.” And yet, somehow, Wolski has achieved his most direct work since the project's inception, inspired by the clarity and conciseness of mainstream pop, by the powerful and undeniable appeal of a simple vocal melody.