“Highly recommended if you like to slap yourself in the face while you boogie.” – The Fader“The whole ’90s noise-punk sound is pretty tired, but Clipd Beaks is one of the few bands around that gives the wavering genre hope.” – XLR8R
“Supermax-tight monolith monsters of psychedelia.” – L.A. Weekly
“Dark and noisy and messy.” – Vice
Los Angeles-based fans of West coast psychedelic thrash prog-rockers Clipd Beaks will have the opportunity to see the band off as it launches an extensive North American tour on October 28th at the LA club, The Echo. The band will be kicking up dust all over the country following the November 6th release of its debut full-length Hoarse Lords on the New York-based Lovepump United label, home of the much blogged about band HEALTH, Genghis Tron and others. Clipd Beaks will be on the road through December in support of the album.
The creation of Hoarse Lords began in the summer of 2005 when Clipd Beaks relocated from Minnesota to Oakland, California. Influenced by hobo culture, the drugged-up hyphy sounds currently dominating Bay Area airwaves, and underground “Neu San Francisco” warehouse parties where techno bangers fade into tribal noise jams, everything on Hoarse Lords is turned up to 11. Harsh and distorted, it's a fitting new sound for a band that references “clipping” in their name, and feels every bit as sick and violent as a severed, bleeding beak.
Even the album's artwork has been organically birthed. The rather interesting visuals feature the work of Erik Luken, who recently created the album art for the Young Machetes LP by Blood Brothers. Luken doesn't touch computers -- all of his work is black and white and hand drawn -- a style which recently prompted Nik Mercer of the bibabidi.net website to exclaim, “The packaging is stellar... entirely hand-written in some bizarre sort of hybrid between hieroglyphics and English...”
Formed in 2003, Clipd Beaks started off with little more than a battered Arp Axxe synthesizer and a microphone but quickly set about marking off its own turf at the intersection of psychedelic post-punk and futuristic noise. Bassist Scott Ecklein and drummer Ray Benjamin met at age seven and have played music together ever since. The nascent Beaks rhythm section met guitarist/synthesist Greg Pritchard inadvertently when, during his “reactionary prepubescent punk” phase, he violently beat on one of Benjamin’s drums while calling them wankers due to their pre-teen band’s sonic similarities to Smashing Pumpkins.
After graduating from high school, where they experimented with mind-altering substances such as British rock and San Diego art-core, the three boys played in an epic instrumental post-rock/prog band. Singer Nic Barbeln was in a different band, whose delayed vocal loops and jam band tendencies they secretly admired from afar. When Barbeln’s band’s drummer ran off to Woodstock to become a Buddhist monk, he was invited to join the other boys for an impromptu jam sesh, and on a sub-zero January night in a loft above a metal bar in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Clipd Beaks was born!
Its first record -- which the band recorded and released itself -- came out that July. It was called Gang Caves and it was about caves near the Mississippi River that gangs used to hang out in. Incorporating lo-fi orchestral samples, liberal use of the aforementioned analog synth, and effected vocals á la Vincent Price’s cameo on “Thriller”, the record still stands as a bizarre testament to the young Beaks’ insatiable appetite for experimentation.
In March of 2006, Tigerbeat6 released the Preyers EP featuring the song “Messed up Desert” which will appear on the soundtrack (alongside Broken Social Scene and Madlib among others) to the upcoming film Gardens of The Night (LINK) starring John Malkovich. Recorded while the band was packing its bags in preparation for an epic cross-country move to California, Preyers documented the anxiety of five boys growing into men in the strange last days of American Empire, leaving their placid Midwest homes behind to venture into the unknown.
Now happily settled in Oakland, the members of Clipd Beaks sound like they're pushing themselves further and further into some unknown and terrifying black hole. On Hoarse Lords, song titles like “Melter” (MP3), “Wrathscapes”, and “We Will Bomb You” set the scene: these are the end times, and Clipd Beaks is right there with you, banging their drums in a tornado. As the record builds to a ferocious conclusion, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, a feeling of peace beyond the point of pain. We can't escape, so we submit, and are consumed.
Clipd Beaks Live:
10/28 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
10/31 San Francisco, CA Hemlock Tavern
11/01 Oakland, CA 21 Grand
11/02 Portland, OR Ground Kontrol
11/03 Seattle, WA Comet Tavern
11/04 Missoula, MT The Palace
11/06 Fargo, ND The Aquarium
11/08 Minneapolis, MN Triple Rock
11/09 East Moline, IL Mixtapes
11/10 Chicago, IL Ronny's Bar
11/11 Lafayette, IN TBA
11/12 Cincinatti, OH Skull Lab
11/13 Columbus, OH Bourbon St.
11/15 Toronto, ONT Sneaky Dee's
11/16 Montreal, PQ Casa del Popolo
11/17 Quebec City, QC Le Bal du Lezard
11/18 Jamaica Plains, MA The Milky Way
11/19 Annadale-on-Hudson, NY Bard College
11/21 Providence, Rhode Island AS220
11/23 New York, NY Cake Shop
11/24 Brooklyn, NY Todd P Show (Venue TBA)
11/25 Philadelphia, PA Queen Sheba II
11/27 Purchase, NY SUNY Purchase
11/28 Washington DC The Bobby Fisher Memorial
11/29 Columbia, SC New Brookland Tavern
11/30 Atlanta, GA Lenny's Bar
12/01 Birmingham, AL Bottletree
12/02 Hot Springs, AR The Exchange
12/04 Houston, TX Proletariat
12/05 San Antonio, TX Rock Bottom Tattoo Bar
12/06 Denton, TX Secret Headquarters
12/07 Austin, TX Emo's
12/10 Phoenix, AZ Modified Arts
Hoarse Lords Tracklisting:
Release Date: November 6th, 2007
01. Melter (MP3)
02. Wrathscapes
03. Manipulator
04. High on Charms
05. Hoarse Lords
06. We Will Bomb You (We Will)
07. Woo Melodies
08. Black Glass
09. Let It Win
On The Web:
Subscribe to Fanatic:
No comments:
Post a Comment