Six years of silence/non-silence, scattered hints entrusted to short EPs. The choice not to fragment or break down a recording project into chapters to be tied to ancient and tested rules of commercial promotion. An increasingly interdisciplinary conception of music as an art form. Gentlemen, these are the Beak>.
Former Portishead member Geoff Barrow, Billy Fuller and Will Young continue their Bristol/post-rock revisitation of kraut-rock. Imperturbable, ambiguous by nature, dense and ready for bursts of innocent naivety, Beak> unexpectedly return – without any song to anticipate their moves – with the most eclectic, inscrutable and elaborate album of their career. The dusty sounds of Billy Fuller's ancient and worn-out synthesizers, the chatter of Will Young's guitars more inclined to weave groove that to reap victims among solo lovers, the singing lazily black and saturated with Geoff Barrow are the basic elements of an album where the same term groove becomes obsolete, as the Beaks have broken this last barrier as well.
No point in disentangling oneself in search of a melodic hold, the seduction of “>>>>” is enclosed in anguished synth cadences that give way to dark interweavings of bass and guitar that chase a minimal and evanescent melody: “Bloody Miles”. Sometimes a spiritual and sentimental shiver seems to want to take over, as in “Strawberry Line” (a song dedicated to Geoff Barrow's dog Alfie, who appears on the cover in a laser-eyed dog version), but it is yet another ingenious illusion that distances itself from the enticing premises to wedge itself between placid sound crescendos and solid rhythmic structures, dictating however the canons of the album, with Can and Silver Apples hanging on the walls behind the musicians.
Variations that are not entirely perceptible at first listen amplify the Beak>'s linguistic ability: before the keyboards project the sound into cosmic-blues settings, the credentials of “Hungry Are We” are those of West Coast psychedelia and the most dreamlike post-rock.
Many others, on the other hand, will be captured by the funk-disco flair of the controversial “Secrets”, a song with notable pop influences in the style of Kraftwerk-Heaven 17, which the band decided to include only on the CD and digital version of the album.
The complex articulation of each of the nine tracks is sealed by a series of apparently indecipherable or alien sounds, and it is difficult to imagine that the sonic dissonances of “Denim” are the result of diabolical manipulations of the electric guitar (the same one that introduces its crooked atmospheres), or that the crude sonic lashes of “Windmill Hill” are born from synths in metal catharsis.
And then there's of course “Ah Yeh”, the brilliantly flattering, post-groove-inducing track, a feast of hip-hop, funk, electronic and psychedelic rhythms that any band would love to have in their repertoire, as well as the equally straightforward and hypnotic “The Seal”, a web of pulsating synth notes, bass, drum machine and slashing guitars that could unfold endlessly like a modern jam session in the style of the Grateful Dead (live it could become their “Dark Star”).
“>>>>” is an album that finally transforms sound fragments into dense and complete compositions, sound distortions into clear visions, euphoria into sadness (and vice versa), chaos into light. An album that is not afraid to entrust the closing to a claustrophobic and bewitching “Cellophane”, a song in which terror and liberation are a single emotion.
03/07/2024
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM