Ten Years Of ATP: Beak>

Boring. I’d like to find a way to counterbalance this, because I did stay till five minutes from the end, but if I wasn’t reviewing it I would have voted with my feet. As all my friends did. One of them was apparently bitching about them at the back, but that’s sort of his new hobby so it doesn’t count.

Ok, so the drumming was very in time, which is a bigger deal than it sounds, especially to this guy I know who probably wishes humans had a Midi interface. And the bass was also very metronomic, and had a good punchy sound with some fatness trailing in the wake of it’s propulsive shuffle. And the guy on the synths and occasional electric guitar seemed to be enjoying himself and on paper the total antidote to the marching boys to his left. But none of it added up to more than the sum of its parts. Having listened to Neu! quite a lot lately, I’m just not able to get excited by Beak>.

Sure, someone can probably point out to me that I’m missing the point, but I still reckon it’s them that’s missing a point. The Beak is a little too blunt. That wasn’t originally going to become the lead up to a bad joke, but I’m feeling pretty bored even remembering their set. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t drunk, perhaps it’s because much of the other acts had made me so angry that my passions were spent. Who knows. All I know is I’m not that bothered by Beak>.

The droning reverbed vocals are quite good, recalling Jim Morrison falling comically into a cartoon abyss. The bass player could do with learning some intervals that don’t go from the fifth fret on the bottom two strings to the seventh on the top. I preferred his other group, Fuzz Against Junk, who played to five people at Invada. He can clearly play more than this, which suggests that they are too mired in a style here.

Beak> ATP Photos (From: Stu Green / shot2bits.net):