BACKSTORY: The mysterious artist began working with acts like Ded Hyatt and untitled (halo) before signing with True Panther for their solo debut
FROM: Unknown
YOU MIGHT KNOW THEM FROM: Tours with Chanel Beads, Youth Lagoon, and Nourished by Time, or their work with the LA-based DIY group 2070
NOW: Still unwilling to divulge much personal information, urika’s bedroom insists on letting the music do the talking on their first LP, Big Smile, Black Mire
urika’s bedroom likes to keep things close to the vest. For starters, we can confidently assume that “urika’s bedroom” isn’t their given name, although they don't disclose any other moniker. We can confirm with 100 percent certainty that they were born somewhere, though once again, where that is exactly hasn’t been revealed. When they hop onto Zoom for our interview, they appear to be in a bunker of sorts, their face barely visible and their head seemingly close to a ceiling. Are they in a very uncomfortable looking hotel room? A catacomb beneath France, perhaps, where they are gearing up for another show opening for Chanel Beads? Again, unclear. But focusing on the details is a fool’s errand. urika’s bedroom’s obscurity only obscures the point. The music is central, the details only act like an anchor drowning what matters beneath the surface.
Shortly after finishing whatever college they attended, ub moved to LA where they began collaborating with untitled (halo) and Ded Hyatt, fellow post-indie rock acts that occupied a nebulous space between reverence for the past and restless anticipation for a future they’re helping to shape. ub has described this project as trying to imagine what Nirvana would sound like if Kurt Cobain recorded on a Macbook, and though they’re not a journalist, that is perhaps a better way of explaining their first ub album, Big Smile, Black Mire, than I could ever come up with.
photo by Khari Cousins
ub cut their teeth in LA playing in DIY surf-/punk-/jangle-pop band 2070, which also helped clarify what they wanted the urika’s bedroom project to encompass. Back in 2020 or so, ub recalls, “I was doing my own stuff the whole time, but I think why that band was important for me was because I had trouble translating my own stuff in a live setting. There was too much going on in the computer, and 2070 helped me reimagine how I could present my music on stage.”
ub says that the process for Big Smile began around 2022, when a few demos began cohering into something stronger than the typical ideas they would pursue. There’s a balance here, which they attribute to those early live shows, between the raw immediacy of performance with the tinkering and studio effects of the project’s DIY bedroom nature. “XTC” takes the angsty guitar rock of Sparklehorse and infuses it with ub’s hushed vocals—equal parts unassuming and pressing. Auxiliary percussion sloshes in the background, giving the song a hint of artificiality, as if ub wants to highlight that all of these parts represent distinct choices in the writing and recording process. Some artists prioritize verisimilitude in the presentation of an album. urika’s bedroom wants to show you all the seams.
photo by urika’s bedroom
“I usually come into things with just a feeling that I’m trying to chase. I need something to scratch this itch. I’m just hunting emotions in hopes of arriving at a specific idea.”
“Exit” features a simple guitar melody, but one that’s interrupted by sounds of dial tones and other technological squeaks beamed in from the early ’90s. Lyrically, the song is imagistic and nasty, a Lynchian fever dream come to life. Much of Big Smile follows this pattern, but “Exit” is particularly obsessed with the perversity of language: “Exit, anxious / Holes in the head pour water / Inside their side / Pound of flesh gone rotten.” ub reminds me a bit of the late poet Frank Stanford, who was called “a swamprat Rimbaud” by Lorenzo Thomas and “one of the great voices of death” by Franz Wright. These are songs mired in filth, but listening to a song like “Circle Games,” it’s impossible not to wanna jump in the mud, too.
The relative vagueness of urika’s bedroom’s lyrics are intentional, an open-endedness that’s far more about sketching moods than reflecting particular feelings. “I usually come into things with just a feeling that I’m trying to chase,” they explain. “I need something to scratch this itch. I’m just hunting emotions in hopes of arriving at a specific idea.”
photo by Khari Cousins
The way ub approaches an idea not from up close but from 30,000 feet away is also indicative of the mysteriousness with which they imbue the project. They want to keep attention on what they call “the right place,” but any emphasis on not emphasizing their backstory will only result in more attention being placed on it. “It comes up because I’m actively trying to have it not come up. It’s like a paradox,” they explain, before noting the reason why this anonymity is still important, still worth whatever contradictions may arise. “It’s just a small attempt at giving the listener a chance at imagination.”
urika’s bedroom is, in many senses, a return to the artist’s childhood roots, when buying CDs was more than a fad and googling your favorite artists was just a tad bit more difficult. “When you don’t know much about an artist, the music becomes larger than life because you’re allowed to imagine around it,” they explain. “One of the best things about art is the interaction of your personal imagination with whatever somebody is giving you and leaving some of those blanks unfilled. There’s room for the art to breathe and transform.” FL
