Stoked to have had this come across my plate, a wicked release we might’ve slept on had it not been flagged for attention by one of the extended Awkward Movements family for NTS. The trio of Beep! consists of Michael Coleman, Ospovat and tUnE-yArDs bassist Naytronix aka Nate Brenner, and they make spectacular music.
Doom synths meet jazz with a mix of video game love twisted in, these retro-futuristic soundings are bang up our alley. Thirteen tracks, and only two of them under a minute, Too Physical covers the widest range of musical storytelling possible, done with an incredible blend of electronic structures and live instrumentation complimenting each other.
Tracks vary from your pure are spaced out synth glitch, with occasionally warm throbbing drums, to hectic fuzz led by guitars and overburdened effects units. Fans of the Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock experimental workings are equally guaranteed to find some joy in here, as Beep! take a similar boundary-pushing approach to how far their music can travel.
If there’ on criticism it’s the standard one – not available on wax. But Data Garden have done a new one on us by releasing the album not just as download, but as a plantable card. That’s right, send off $6 and you’ll receive a handmade card with a download code on the back. Stick it in the garden and watch flowers grow from soil. Nifty trick.
One of the more vintage gaming sounding tracks got it’s own video, which you can check out below, and press release underneath that. Limited to 200 cards, head over here to grab it and stream a few more tracks from the album: http://store.datagarden.org/album/too-physical
via Data Garden
It’s been a busy few years for the gentlemen of Beep, and Too Physical, the trio’s fourth album, shows the growth that frenetic schedules can bring about. Since the release of the glossy City of the Future in 2011, each member has struck out on solo paths, launching careers under the monikers Naytronix, Piki, and Young Nudist. Piki himself relocated to Brooklyn, forcing the majority of their latest offering to be a cross-country collaboration. With that in mind, it’s truly a wonder how Beep manages to appear here as a more cohesive unit than ever, but they do.
Using CotF as the foundation, Michael, Nate, and Sam unabashedly tear up the infrastructure of said city and rebuild from the ground up, creating a hyperglobalized multiplex of a world in which alien and robot collide with perfect three-part harmony and free improvisations on one another’s instruments appear alongside the mastery that each have on his own. Too Physical comes together like a post-jazz DJ mixtape, racing around from catchy melody to glitchy bliss, rap skit to superb cameo by Bay Area freakcalist Lorin Benedict, profundity to absurdity, and culminating in a nod to their former selves in “Alice Again,” a revisitation of “Alice” off of their debut album Short Stories featuring a chorus that would warm Vince Guaraldi’s heart on the coldest of winter nights.