Ekspress – Ugly Trees (2020)

Immediately I’m filled with nervous tension and excitement. The harsh electronic beat stirs something deep. The back of my head burns slightly. By the time the cool and detached vocal starts, I’m both hooked and convinced that I am hearing some renegade military message.

It’s as if this harsh but always feminine voice is speaking, no commanding me directly. A sophisticated siren pulling me off the standard path, forcing me to think, feel and dream. I’m mesmerized by the sinisterness and sensuality of the provocations. Maybe all this should make me feel uncomfortable. But it does not.

Ugly Trees is the latest single by the German electronic artist Ekspress, whose previously released 12 inch single was as mysterious as it was hard hitting. After lighting up the boards of the electronic music scene in Germany, the Eastern Bloc and Middle East, Ekspress vanished in 2011, as quickly as she arrived. For nearly 10 years, fans were given nothing, not a morsel worth groveling for. Her fanatical, almost cult-like following deprived of even a scrap of information or music. Until now.

The new single Ugly Trees suddenly dropped on Bandcamp in May 2020, starting a bush-fire among the fans dedicated to the brave waves of the experimental music underground: Ekspress was back and rewarding the European dance-floors with her sharp, uncompromised vocals and mechanized electro beats.

Ugly Trees is surreal, innovative fun with a serious message from a unique perspective. Here we have nobody singing about saving the beautiful planet, but crooning like Ivan Drago over the beauty of grey brutalism and modernist buildings, regarding wild nature as an enemy of the growing dystopia of our societies. The electro-acoustic backing track will make you rethink what can be captured within a simple beat enhanced by a unique robotic-drone that is both sinister and sexy. But it’s the vocal performance that immediately snaps with personality- you can’t resist. Ekspress’ vocal style is part disciplined, Soviet broadcaster in exile, still spinning her communist lies, and part deadly temptress: full of innuendo and mystery.

The brutal humor is right there as the track begins “Good morning / It’s a lovely day/ I am a dandy, a modernist / gracing the pavements with my klack-klack shoes “. The imaginary of grey brutalism and a heartless high-heeled amazon is immediately established in your mind. After complaining about the annoying green destroying the modern skylines dominated by steel and glass, and accusing trees of not following the rules by not sticking to their ‘own place’, the forests, she makes clear which destiny should await them: “But when I see the friendly forester with his red axe coming to fell a sick tree… yes, then I do feel deeply satisfied/ I just think / Why didn’t you bring your chainsaw? / It is such a good soundtrack / to the concrete palaces created by superior taste “. Our modern, destructive civilization that is.

Doom awaits them and probably us too. Ugly Trees has something to say by flipping the most important issues of our day right on their head – in the most intriguing way. Ready to take on both the corporate-destroyers and the environmental movement that is more caught-up in the political process than real change.

It’s no mystery what’s happening to the world around us. Ekspress is well aware of our slow but sure acceptance of the message of our corporate polluters and rulers. We hear it in her steady, menacing calmness which is lulling us into the belief that everything will be alright soon, making us accept the most outrageous message with sensual authoritarianism. Ugly Trees exposes the perversion with a change of perspective and exaggeration. It is a perverted facsimile of the propaganda used by the western governments and their corporate media, designed specifically to circumvent and undermine any hope of actual change within the system. It’s mocking our willingness to not only accept the insanity but embrace it as our own.

With rare intelligence and biting, bitter humor, Ekspress gives us many reasons to come back again and again to Ugly Trees. Its innovative sound and remarkable vocal performance are a good place to begin- the song is addictive and an uncompromising highlight of 2020.

by Shawn Ciavattone