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Beak “Backwell”

The first three minutes of “Backwell” is all drone and subtle throb, sloooowly building up a tension that breaks suddenly into an intense, panicky groove. From there on out, a busy synthesizer riff takes the lead, as a crisp beat keeps the piece moving toward an endless horizon familiar to anyone that’s heard a bit of Krautrock. Beak is a side project for Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, and it’s already had a direct impact on the work of his main band, yielding the impossibly brilliant charity single “Chase The Tear.” The Beak material doesn’t quite hit that high standard — Beth Gibbons’ presence lends a certain magic, obviously — but it’s excellent work on its own terms, and an intriguing peak into Barrow’s process as he toys with new methods of working and gets some Kraut-y pastiche out of his system before coming up with something more fresh and distinctive with his regular collaborators.

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