Four relevant artistic profiles, an ambitious and wild project where improvisation and deconstruction travel in sync with stimulating and unpredictable effects: the Beings album is this and much more.
“There Is A Garden” is a record that justifies the title of Albert Ayler's heir offered to the young American saxophonist Zoh Amba. The carnal and guttural screech of the sax that illuminates the dark groove of “Small Vows” and intercepts its equally restless guitar textures, as well as the listless singing that connects the psych-folk digressions of “Morning Sea” are a sufficient calling card to guarantee its artistic value. The American musician of Pakistani origins Shahzad Ismally also confirms himself as an authentic star and skilled multi-instrumentalist: his fame as a sought-after sessionman is sealed by the teeming rhythmic and instrumental textures of “Face Of Silence”, one of the most dynamic and unpredictable pages of “There Is A Garden”.
Experimentation, alt-rock, drone music and spiritual-jazz are the daily bread of the quartet (“Sun Greeted”), the ecstatic touch of guitarist Steve Gunn and the well-tested experience with the intricate mesh of post-rock of Jim White of the Dirty Three offer space for songs with a sad pace, yet ready to implode with a heartbreaking noise emphasis (“Flowers That Talk”).
Beings are not afraid to show off their technique and creative risk, they also prove capable of keeping impetuosity and harmonic irreverence at bay in the six and a half minutes of the splendid trance of “Happy To Be,” a song that could easily come from an Alabaster DePlume project.
Zoh Amba, Steve Gunn, Shahzad Ismally and Jim White use the typical structure of a band for a leap in expressive and artistic quality, “There Is A Garden” is an album full of flashes, elegant contrasts, the four musicians extract from the dense mesh of sonic maximalism authentic psych-folk-noir delights, of rare, dissonant beauty, such as “God Dances In Your Eyes”.
It's not an easy album, Beings' debut, but nothing offered in these 37 minutes sounds superfluous or pretentious. Technique, imagination and power travel hand in hand, for an original and invigorating listening experience.
29/06/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM