Whatever floats your boat, this may not be it. Really, a large part of me is surprised that this particular boat belongs in part to Portishead’s Geoff Barrow at all. If there’s one phrase I definitely don’t recall popping into my head while listening to Dummy it was “krautrock noodling.” But there’s been a lot of German prog name-dropping going on with this release by Barrow and fellow Bristol boys Billy Fuller and Matt Williams. And, to an extent, with good reason. It certainly sounds like it could have been cut circa 1974 in a studio two doors down from Can, Neu!, Amon Düül, or some other vaguely krautrock-y name I could just make up. Toss in the fact that these dudes recorded all of this in a single room with no post-production and wrote it in one 12 day session, and you can see why people might be quick to drink some throwback Kool-Aid in today’s 8-bit glitch landscape.

Which isn’t to say there’s no synthy dicking around to be found here; it’s practically smeared in the stuff. But I’ll cop to the fact that there’s something oddly comforting about the (admittedly synthetic) earthiness of it all. And while Third gave the world a glimpse of a somehow-even-darker Portishead, it certainly didn’t hint at the blackness that Beak> brings to the table. Before I had ever heard Silver Apples, I kind of assumed they were on some sunny 60’s day-glo shit, but after the first two tracks of Beak> I found myself slammed into the same queasy ominousness that that band first surprised me with. That initial familiarity doesn’t hang around for long, though, with the band soon enough skittering all over the place. The crunching guitar lines of “Ham Green” manage to juxtapose themselves with the ethereal when we arrive at “Battery Point,” one of the album’s few pinholes of light. But you’ll forget all that by the time your noise tolerance is tested by tracks like “Barrow Gurney.” In a lot of ways, much of what’s on display here is what I had hoped a group like Sunn O))) sounded like: heavy experimental grind with receded vocals that occasionally kicks ass. I mean, pretense is pretense, but I’ll take mine sounding like this and leave the cartoon demon vox for somebody else.

A large part of the enjoyment here relies purely on surprise. Plenty of artists take time for side projects or decide to move their work in different directions with middling results (Hi, Kanye).  So to give a cursory listen to a knob-twiddling side project out of obligation to an artist’s previous work, it’s definitely a relief to discover that it doesn’t blow up in their face. Sometimes risks pay off. And considering that “risk” isn’t exactly the watchword on the lips of most musicians these days, Beak> at least deserves a tip of the hat for making theirs work. And if you hate it, hey, at least you tried something new.  ~ Jim Feeney

MP3 1: Beak> – Backwell
MP3 2: Beak> – Ham Green
MP3 3: Beak> – Battery Point

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