Beak>
New Century Hall, Manchester,
6th November 2024
The Mighty Beak> return to Manchester once again to figuratively slay us into submission with their cosmic genius. MK Bennett is soundly beaten.
The interior halls at New Century are reasonably untouched and have authentic fixtures and fittings from the 1960s. The ceilings, in particular, must have had that unknown futurism, that triangular yet cuboid effect that reflects the lights so well when it still looked like the future. Though modern politics shows us that any forecastable future is guesswork at best, there is some comfort in miscasting the unknown, discordant but familiar.
Beak> hallucinogenic godheads from God’s own country make music like The Hulk makes cakes, a heartfelt desire to please that meets an obstinate insistence on single-minded determination to do his own thing. Sloppy like Funkadelic, and tight like Funkadelic too, you know there’s a plan, but they may not know that we know. If you take the setlist as a starting point, for example, rather than a rigid list of the specifically planned, you can relax into an idea, imagining what you heard or might have heard. A Beak> gig is not a place for rules; even the neon backdrop seems like a private joke, though it is very pretty.
Starting with the magnificent Strawberry Line, it sounds like monks chanting a Can song from memory while some crazed genius lets loose on a keyboard. Like everything they touch, it is mesmerising—a driven piece of artful Krautrock stuck in a sublime groove, a two-chord hypnosis. Next is The Seal. (They are not going to run through the album, surely? The album of the year? Imagine that?) and that beautiful bass/synth bass rattles your ribcage; every progression is a murmur from the soul, every murmur a deeper conversation.
Windmill Hill, with its lovely reference to Chorlton and The Wheelies, is another drum-fuelled and haunted vision, a testament and soundtrack for the arrival of the witches. It is short but sweet despite the discordancy. Denim is one of those relaxed numbers: the slow-picked line of bass guitar and broken sci-fi themes are tied together by a disappearing vocal melody. (Yes, they are running through the Album of the Year. What about the talking?) The chitchat, as your Nanna would have called it, is probably worthy of a separate review and album release of its own, caught somewhere between Les Dawsons Ada and three blokes in a motorway café, it was at all times highly entertaining and wholly non-deliberate.
Hungry Are We starts with a beautiful and misty-eyed guitar motif akin to The Electric Prunes, stylised by David Axelrod, eventually picking up steam before returning to earth dramatically. Ah Yeh, is not a reference to every House track of the 90s, but a near Afrobeat meets Damo Suzuki minimalist workout with a great hook. Half sang, half jammed with a predominant keyboard line, the ending, in particular, follows lines of hypnotic beauty to lose yourself in.
Bloody Miles has a similar orbit, several awed keyboard lines that intertwine spectacularly for minutes, static but moving underneath the skin when the drums come with more Motorik fervour, and your heart moves in increments because the bass is heard and felt, soaked up through the floor. Secrets drumbeat does not as initially thought, eventually become Diana Ross’ Chain Reaction, but instead a sort of Yacht Rock via Peter Gabriel. Cellophane is an atmospheric thing where Argento and Goblin’s massed hordes sing to you softly, though there is no blood lining the walls of the New Century, at least not literally.
Though not precisely the greatest hits, the next few songs are very recognisable if you revel in the general area of this music, the stuff that the streaming platforms insist on labelling ‘Psychedelic’, even though its nature suggests something more structured and rhythmic than Psychedelia, in the end perhaps it’s just a different route to the same idea of bliss. First, the colossal Brean Down, so good live you get lost inside it, as great a slice of modern wonder as anything machine-made, its peaks purely human.
Yatton, despite some dispute over the speed, settles into its sequenced brilliance with the comfort of an old dog sleeping, music that immediately elevates you to a greater level of understanding, a trance state of meditative love, everybody is moving, everyone is smiling. Finally, and sadly for us that witness is the distorted Funk supremacy of Wulfstan II, the only way they could ever and should ever finish a gig. Always leave the people dancing.
As the lights go up, there is a mini-riot at the very reasonably priced merch stall and a lot of people trying to get the taped to the stage handwritten setlists, but just for once, those highly sought-after paper trophies might not have been able to tell the full story of a night of joyous musical exploration and head expanding perfection.
~
Beak> Instagram | Facebook | Website
All words and pictures by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
We have a small favour to ask. Subscribe to Louder Than War and help keep the flame of independent music burning. Click the button below to see the extras you get!
