Download: Beak>, ‘Wulfstan’
Kevin Bronson on
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As a founding member and producer of Portishead, Geoff Barrow has been saddled with the unfortunate “trip-hop” tag ever since the Bristol, U.K., outfit scooped the Mercury Music prize with debut LP “Dummy” in 1995. If the band’s musically expansive 2008 album “Third” wasn’t quite enough of a departure, then Barrow seems determined to shed the downtempo moniker with his new project, Beak>. With the help of fellow Bristol musicians Billy Fuller (Fuzz Against Junk) and Matt Williams (Team Brick), this band is exploring some much heavier sonic territory, informed more by ’70s Krautrock than the Blue Note archives. On single “Wulfstan,” Barrow’s dark, brooding vocal is almost buried beneath distorted bass, pounding drums and droning organ. Trip-hop this is not.
||| Download (via Pitchfork): “Wulfstan” (background from P4k here)
||| Live: Beak> performs Sept. 9 at Amoeba and Sept. 10 at the Troubadour.
– By David McKay
Sounds like Geoff’s been listening to his Amon Duul collection.