Review

Beak>

>>>>

Invada • 2024

Beaaaaak is the sound a guitar makes when Billy Fuller drags it across a synth while simultaneously kicking the bass drum. The album »>>>>« rips that sound out of the cosmic ether and lets it drone into the morning. Beak> creates a full-bodied cosmic trip sound, perhaps capturing what post-rock was always meant to be. From the very first track, Portishead mastermind Geoff Barrow is joined by Billy Fuller and Will Young and suck the listener in a cosmic madness that’s hard to escape.

Beak> looks both to the sea and to the sky, launching itself into space like a liquid submarine: from there, a galactic dog shoots the psychedelic wanderer with its laser eyes, blasting the last bit of trance out of his soul (at least that’s what the album cover suggests). No, seriously: »>>>>«is a surprising journey and yet pure psychedelia. It’s as if Radiohead and Can had a baby in the late 2000s that doesn’t quite fit in. And eventually you lose your bearings in the sonic fog, and the almost fifty minutes are over before you know it, leaving you wrapped tightly in cling film: everything is soft, everything is warm, everything is »Cellophane«.