Urban Exploration Bio

 

Urban Exploration (UE) are a collective of musicians, techno DJs and visual artists who have been working together since 2011. The group has seen many different line-ups and configurations and has largely opted to stay below the radar during that long history. Originally formed from the vestiges of a raucous free party scene in Leeds, the crew decided to turn inwards, nursing their decade-long come-down with their various strange new hobbies - scoring experimental films, exploring abandoned buildings, making field recordings, building and using DIY music technology.


"wrapped in siren-like electronics and urgent percussive bursts, the effect is not unlike listening to the black box recorder salvaged from a doomed power station" Spenser Tomson, The Wire


The group became very interested in weird echoes and odd sonic spaces, recording the huge reverb in derelict cooling towers and old flax mills, incorporating those sounds into new compositions. Many of UE's rare live performances have also been in such spaces - from 10 hours of drone, improvised in an old church, to dropping and sampling the sound of broken pianos at Temple Works, Leeds.

Despite these experimental tendencies, the collective has largely remained bound together through their enduring love of techno and electro. Even their ambient and noise pieces often feel like they have strong currents of techno running through them. More recently the group has been flirting with the notion of hauntology and working more and more like a traditional band in many ways.


"On Utopic, this takes the form of pleasure-seeking optimism via tempos that are more dancefloor than numbers station... this aspect softens the edges of the doomier tone beneath, clinging to the fading memories of rave"


Much of the last few years has been spent building Crooked Acres Studio and developing new sound design processes, including improvising with the help of AI.

The link between sound and vision is also very important to the group. UEAV and Ambient Films are key side projects that develop video installations, VJ performances, music videos and even documentaries. 

You can learn more about the band's creative processes by watching their film Praxis, which attempted to chart the first few years of Urban Exploration's unique work and method. 

The group also runs Crooked Acres Records, and will be releasing their first vinyl EP in 2023. 


Selected discography: 

Haikyo (2012) 
Evolve (2013) 

Black Box EPs (2015)

UEMix (2017)
Utopic / Heterotopic / Dystopic (2019)
Terra Incognita (2021)
AEAEA (2023 - forthcoming)

You can buy their music here:

https://urbexmusic.bandcamp.com/