(Invada/Remote Control)

Bleak Bristolians, featuring Portishead’s Geoff Barrow

The more experimental Portishead we heard on their long-awaited album Third last year has clearly left a lasting impression on one of its creators Geoff Barrow. His latest outfit Beak> teams him up with fellow Bristol musicians Billy Fuller and Matt Williams, and the three-piece’s debut album is edited from songs created in the studio from the ground up. Recorded live, the material is darker and eerier than Portishead, even going further leftfield than Tricky at his most murky. The hypnotic rhythms of tracks like Pill owe a debt to krautrock (two songs in particular, Pill and Iron Acton, are dead ringers for early Can). Not all of their experiments work – Ears Have Ears is sluggish and slack-jawed where it should be mesmerising, while Barrow Gurney is two minutes of ineffectual white noise. But there are enough payoffs to make the record worthwhile. The Cornubia is a likeably forlorn piece of echoey slowcore and they save their blackest magic for the seven-minute sludgefest of Dundry Hill. Don’t expect to hear any of this in your local café.

***½  

MATT THROWER

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