Beak>

Drawing from dub, Krautrock, and the Beach Boys, Beak> shapes dense atmospheric music marked by an atmosphere entirely its own. The taut-yet-gloomy tone of releases such as the trio’s self-titled 2009 debut aligned Beak> with soundtrack assignments that encompassed the score for 2016’s Couple in a Hole and the musical accompaniment for the 2022 graphic novel Kosmik Musik. Although the band’s palette widened to encompass more structured songs alongside farther-reaching experiments on albums like 2018’s Beak 3, the 2024 return to origins on Beak 4 sharpened their unmistakable character.

The group formed in late 2008 after Portishead producer/multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow, bassist Billy Fuller, and keyboardist Matt Williams improvised together at Invada Records’ Christmas party and began performing as Beak> in early 2009. They tracked their debut album across twelve days under a strict code that required all three members to lay down parts in a single room with no overdubs permitted. BEAK appeared in fall 2009 on Ipecac in the U.S. and Invada in the U.K., shortly before the band’s official live debut at the Ten Years of ATP Festival.

That year Barrow met and signed Anika, the German political journalist turned post-punk singer, and Beak> recorded her 2010 eponymous debut album. Barrow simultaneously pursued other Invada-related ventures, among them Quakers, an underground hip-hop collective, and Drokk, his collaboration with composer Ben Salisbury inspired by the long-running comic strip Judge Dredd. Quakers’ self-titled album and Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One both surfaced in early 2012, soon followed by a new Beak> album, Beak 2. That year also brought the Mono/Kenn single and a split single with DD/MM/YYYY.

The band resurfaced in 2015 with the BEAK>’s score to Belgian director Tom Geens’ psychological drama Couple in a Hole, mixing tracks from earlier albums with new original material, arrived in May 2016. Later that year Matt Williams left and was replaced by Will Young, also of Moon Gangs. In 2017 Beak> issued two singles: June’s Sex Music, which carried a remix by Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, and December’s Merry Xmas (Face the Future), whose proceeds supported the mental-health resources The National Elf Service and The Mental Elf. L.A. Playback, a digital compilation of B-sides and rarities, appeared in April 2018. Later that year Matt Williams returned on drums for the band’s third studio album. Released in September 2018 via Invada and Temporary Residence, Beak 3 was largely written and recorded live and found the group setting motorik beats aside in favor of experiments with prog rock, pop, and folk. The companion EP Life Goes On—whose title track drew from a distorted recording of a young girl’s voice that Beak> encountered in Mexico City—followed the next June.

In 2020 Beak> reissued the 2010 EP Wulfstan, named after the Norman-era saint who campaigned against slavery, as an expression of solidarity with protesters who toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston. The following September the band released the single “Oh Know/Ah Yeh.” A year later Beak> delivered Kosmik Musik, the musical accompaniment to artist Joe Currie and writer/director Ben Wheatley’s sci-fi graphic novel of the same name, both drawing inspiration from sources ranging from Douglas Adams, Star Trek, and Star Wars to Krautrock. For their next album the band returned to their beginnings by testing ideas at a house in Wales. Appearing in May 2024, Beak 4’s psychedelic motorik workouts were conceived to be heard as a single piece.