Beak> can really unleash a restless beat, some dark and powerful beast using some haunting monochord faded vocals which can put you in a Joy-Division-kind-of mood, and an ascending effect which could explode at any time.
Beak> is the new project of Portishead member, Geoff Barrow (on drums), Fuzz against Junk founder (who has also collaborated with Massive Attack) Billy Fuller (on bass) and Team Brick member, Matt Williams (on keyboard and guitar).
Matt arrived late on the Amoeba stage, and while waiting for him, Geoff and Billy yelled at him ‘Matt, don’t fucking do your shopping!’ But Geoff Barrow really loves Amoeba (he even put an Amoeba sticker on one of his suitcase), and, as he was looking around him, he said to us how much we should treasure such an amazing record store because there was nothing like this left in the UK.
Most of the songs seemed to be just moods, slightly changing, but staying the same for the longest time, some others (like ‘Battery point’) had more melody, no vocals at all and were softly progressing towards a comforting and soothing place, slowly elevating itself to a bright, glorious, and peaceful moment, before elegantly dying out. Like revisiting a beautiful feeling over and over, deeper and deeper until exhausting the pleasure you could get out of it.
There were some somber moments, uneasy, a little scary, with vocals seemingly coming from afar, intense moments during which you’d never guess what would happen next, and this unpredictability was bringing more fascination to the whole thing. Some vocal harmonies were reminiscent of Radiohead, or even the Flaming lips (I thought a lot about the Lips’ last and experimental ‘Embryonic’ album during ‘Wulfstan’), although Beak> was less symphonic, and more focused on one idea during a song.
Overall, their music universe seemed to be slowly and progressively built up from nothing or almost, with a lot of repetitive phrases and hypnotic musical ideas without being boring for a second. And I thought it was the most outstanding thing accomplished by the band, never being boring despite the repetitiveness, and the symmetrical aspect of some numbers. But how could they be boring when the numbers are so different from each other?
Whereas drums are usually one of the loudest elements in an orchestration, here drums and bass were in general soft and modest, but Matt Williams was getting the noisiest sounds of his synthesizer, producing powerfully distorted sounds and noises, being front stage in every song. The volume of distortion on some tracks (like ‘Barrow Gurney’) was making the listening experience almost painful. Ha, I know, they call this style Krautrock, the 70’s electronic style and there was obviously plenty of influence from the German style in Beak>.
Geoff Barrow and Matt Williams switched spots for a song, and just when Geoff was getting back behind the drum set, with humor, he advertised their show at the Troubadour the next night. ‘But it costs money, so you made the right choice’.
It may have been a good idea to get introduced to their music live, listening to their album without seeing them in flesh would probably have been a totally different experience, not as vivid and intense; this is an adventure you truly want to live in the real world.