Astrel K

Astrel K fuses exploratory sonic elements drawn from film scores, post-rock, indie electronica, and richly arranged heartbreak ballads of 1970s vintage with close-up vocals and subtle melodic threads, yielding music that feels reassuring yet unsettling in equal measure. The solo outlet for Ulrika Spacek member Rhys Edwards benefited from Stereolab’s endorsement when the reactivated Duophonic Super 45s label issued Astrel K’s first album, Flickering i, in 2022. Tough Love then supported the follow-up, 2024’s The Foreign Department, whose sound proved more ornate and expansively melancholic.

Edwards already knew the indie rock circuit before adopting the Astrel K name. His path opened in the early 2010s with the Reading dream pop band Tripwires, which released several singles and two albums—Spacehopper in 2013 and Watermelancholia in 2015—before Edwards and fellow member Rhys Williams formed Ulrika Spacek. That group absorbed a broader range of influences stretching from Krautrock to Sonic Youth and Television, and soon entered a partnership with Tough Love Records that began with the 2018 single “Everything All the Time.” Ulrika Spacek went on to issue multiple singles, an EP, and two albums—The Album Paranoia in 2016 and Modern English Decoration in 2017—through the label. During those years the band lived and rehearsed inside a London communal space called KEN; after losing the premises, Edwards relocated to Stockholm.

Without existing musical contacts in Sweden, he spent time writing and recording purely for himself, guided by slowcore, library music, and Broadcast. Once he decided to formalize the sessions, he enlisted Swedish musicians Lili Holényi, Milton Öhrström, Niklas Mellberg, and Tomas Hellberg. The first track to surface was the 2020 single “You Could If You Can” on the reconstituted Duophonic Super 45s label. Run by Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane along with manager Martin Pike, the imprint had earlier released many influential indie and post-rock records throughout the 1990s, and Edwards’ material fit comfortably within that catalog. After two further years of recording, the debut Astrel K album Flickering i appeared in April 2022. More song-oriented than his Ulrika Spacek work, the record set calmly experimental textures against compact melodies and reflective lyrics. Following an Ulrika Spacek reunion that produced the 2023 album Compact Trauma and a short North American tour, Edwards released the second Astrel K album at the start of 2024. Rooted in the classic themes of heartbreak and dislocation, and shaped by the ornate arrangements of mid-’70s Leonard Cohen and Mercury Rev’s middle period, he augmented his still largely post-rock songs with string and horn parts. Tough Love issued The Foreign Department in March, after which the band played a brief round of U.K. record-store shows.