EXEK Prove The Mountains Move Vinyl LP 2026

Tracklist:

1. Sidestepping
2. You Have Been Blessed
3. Visiting Dust Bunnies
4. Arrivederci Back Pain
5. Don’t Answer (when They Call)
6. Tyres
7. Spotless
8. Chef’s Hat Renaissance

For just over a decade, EXEK has very quietly become one of the most hypnotic bands on the planet, mutating and growing from record to record, gradually opening themselves up without ever losing that strange, inscrutable, altogether essential quality thats made them so greatso EXEK-y. On 27 February, the Melbourne post-punk outfitvocalist and chief architect Albert Wolski, guitarist Jai Morris-Smith, drummer Chris Stephenson, synth specialist Andrew Brocchi, trumpet-brandishing vocalist Valya YL Hooi, and bassist Ben Hepworthwill release Prove The Mountains Move, their seventh album and first for DFA. It is, as Wolski says, a bit more epic than anything hes recorded to date, a lush and unabashedly melodic set of surrealist pop that luxuriates in contradiction. This record is experimental in its craft, Wolski says, but it may not necessarily sound experimental. Theres good reason for that. Work began on a cold afternoon in June of 2023, as Wolski and Stephenson came together at Pelican Refill Studios in Melbourne to track drumsthe first thing they always do. From there, Wolski went home on his own and began sifting through the beats and breaks theyd captured, letting the drum sounds guide him towards melodies and basslines, looping and layering and laying foundation for what would become Prove The Mountains Move. I feel comfortable tinkering away alone like a mad scientist, he says. I also enjoyed pressing record with no clear intention. More often than not, that would steer me towards an interesting direction that my conscious mind probably wouldnt have sought out. And yet, somehow Wolski arrived at his most direct work since he launched the project, newly inspired by the clarity and concision of mainstream pop, the strong and undeniable pull of a simple vocal melody. After Melbournes famously stringent COVID lockdowns ended, he found himself wanting to stay out. Working on new music took a distant backseat to raging with friends, he says. And those parties were filled with big bangers as the soundtrackstuff I didnt really listen to on my own, stuff I hadnt really encountered since my adolescence. But in the early hours of Sunday morning, Alive by Pearl Jam sounds like youre talking to God. And so does All I Wanna Doby Sheryl Crow, and so does Feel by Robbie Williams. Krautrock and dub were still in my DNA, but the music that I started to make was perhaps a little more lighthearted, and perhaps a bit more emotional. Which isnt to say you should expect to hear traces of Eddie Vedder in Wolskis vocal delivery here, but the stakes feel similar in their own waythis is what it sounds like when EXEK are really going for it. Take, for instance, the levitating synths of opener Sidestepping or the mountainous guitars of Arriverderci Back Pain, the piano bench pyrotechnics of Dont Answer (When They Call) or the Bowie-like melancholy of You Have Been Blessed. The arrangements feel more open, the sonics more focused. Its not hard to believe him when Wolski says he spent time earnestly A-Bing his mixes of Prove The Mountains Move against some of the most important albums ever recorded, Abbey Road among them. But everything is relative. And lyrically, Wolski remains oblique. Each song is a vignette into an abstract milieu, whether its an experimental chiropractic business at an airport, or scantily clad creatures made from dust at a food court. No matter how wacky, theres themes and motifs throughout the record, both lyrical and musical, that mirror up and reflect each other throughout different songs. That dissonancebetween the direct and indirect, smooth and textured, shadowed and incandescent, zany and deadpanis the animating force at the heart of these songs, his best yet.