Beak>

FANTASTIC! A modern rendition of krautrock/psyche/whatever you call this, mixed with a good dose of experimentalism and eastern flavored musical textures, and indecipherable, echoey, chant-like vocals. Amazingly slow, dark, and brooding in some tracks, dreamy as hell on others and even doom-metal style heavy on some more, these guys just fucking rock. The whole thing was recorded live in 12 days, by the way. Beak> are a trio of bass, drums, and keyboards and feature Geoff Barrow from Portishead, though there are no evident trip-hop elements here. You are holding in your hands one of the best albums I've heard in a while. Don't miss out on this one! For fans of: Neu, Can, Guru Guru, Harmonia, early Pink Floyd, Fripp & Eno, Wooden Shjips.

Picks: 8, 2, 1, 5, 11, 6, 3 *** No FCCs ***

Can/Neu-style jams: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8

**1. starts quietly, only bass, organ comes in and then @-3:07 goes into this amazing motorik Neu-style jam... very nice!
**2. middle-eastern style psyche intro (is this a violin?), bass kicks in, wow these guys are amazing... i love the psyche-style organ. sounds like something that came out of Turkey in the 70s. where are the drugs???
*3. weird chanting intro, horror film style bass, background mumbling and then... BOOM @-3:02 feedback kicks in, and we have the Melvins... excellent...
*4. another Neu-style motorik jam with a super weird keyboard sound as background... quite upbeat, almost techno-like! think Wooden Shjips
**5. wow nice and dreamy... think Eno or old-school Pink Floyd, beautiful textures, reverb... awesome! builds up nice and smooth and stays there for a while, very post-rock, but not boring
**6. weird intro keyboards give in to yet another Can-like motorik beat... these guys love their krautrock. quite intense! disconcerting background chants for sure, nice interplay with keyboard...
7. noisy noodling around, builds into this slow spooky horror film soundtrack thing, nice!
***8. reverb drenched bass and Kraftwerk style electronic sound slowly build up into a tight motorik jam... fantastic!
9. video-game keyboard abstract abrasive noisiness
10. hah! slow, almost cheesy lounge music style, but kinda twisted
**11. Sunn O))), Earth style heaviness, slow, sludgy, great!
12. slow, repetitive, melancholic... builds up in intensity towards the end. kinda like Godspeed. a fitting closer to a great record!