Clipd Beaks

By Kyle Lemmon

Photo by Kyle Guy

There are many bands that are together for eight months or a year and suddenly they’re the hip/hot thing on all the blogs,” says Clipd Beaks guitarist/synthesist Greg Pritchard. “That’s not us because we’re from Minnesota and we had to figure out all this stuff out for ourselves as good friends.”

Now prominent in the Oakland warehouse scene of the Bay Area, Clipd Beaks have managed to figure out the DIY ropes fairly well. They’ve endured the test of time, playing together since high school in the Midwest, and discovered a fondness for migration and dismantling their sound. Their tribal soundscapes summon up the noise-rock scene left in the wake of The Birthday Party and The Jesus Lizard and the hardcore of Antioch Arrow or the tape loop experimenting of the U.K. progressive-cum-post-punk outfit This Heat. And on their newest record, Hoarse Lords (released last month on their new label Lovepump United) Clipd Beaks cleave their musical influences like a butcher does meat.

Clipd Beaks formed in 2003, during an ad-lib jam session on a frigid January night in a loft above a Minneapolis metal bar. When Pritchard talks about the Beaks’ comportment towards making music, it sounds just like that first night: “Our process is very intuitive. Our music is super dense and layered because all of us bring our individual ideas of what we think each song should be.”

The rest of the band approaches the studio with a varied background. Scott Ecklin’s sludge-filled bass tips towards dub and Ray Benjamin’s drums remind listeners of the ominous Massive Attack. Their tight latticing of sound points to their long-standing friendship since the age of seven. Pritchard added his love of ambient electronic music when he joined the steadfast rhythmic friends in high school. After graduation, singer Nic Barbeln joined the Beaks on that fateful winter night after the drummer for his band at the time, Leaves (Clipd Beaks got their name from a Leaves song), ran off to Woodstock, N.Y. to become a Buddhist monk.

The band quickly built a reputation in the cross-pollinating Minneapolis scene. After a self-produced debut called Gang Caves, about caves near the Mississippi River, Pritchard decided to move to California. At the time, he thought the band would cease to exist without him. “Maybe I was kind of arrogant,” says Pritchard, “but as soon as I heard their new songs I felt strongly that I needed to play with them.”

Almost instantly the band migrated in tow. Now Clipd Beaks have survived yet another move with some of its members in Oakland and some in L.A. In light of all these locale shifts, Pritchard ascribes the reason behind the cohesiveness of the group to their unwavering friendship.

The Beaks have some more friends in the form of a new label, Lovepump United — the NYC-based indie noise-rock label founded in 2004 by Vassar College students Jake Friedman and Mookie Singerman that has released albums from Montreal’s AIDS Wolf, Genghis Tron, Health and Indian Jewelry. Pritchard explains that, despite the bleak future some small indie labels face because of illegal downloading, Lovepump decided to gamble and back a band that’s not on all the blogs. “Lovepump has put in a lot of sacrifice and hard-earned money into something they love,” says Pritchard. “They’ve really earned a stamp of credibility in a short time.”

On their Lovepump debut Hoarse Lords, Clipd Beaks continue to stay true to their live improvisational roots. Pritchard likens the band’s style of recording to “anarchy” or “a kind of soup where you can pick out specific parts” from the whole noisy frayed mess. The reckless abandon of singer Nic Barbeln (scat singing included) is mirrored in the post-studio layering of vocals over the shrieking guitars on acerbic songs like “Melter” and the Krautrock electronic dinosaur “Manipulator.” “Instead of starting off as a trashy noise-punk band and then moving towards being a more refined melodic pop band,” Pritchard says, “we’ve done the opposite.”

Next spring, the band will push that ball of noise forward by looking back and release a 14-track compilation titled Shards. The first digital release for Lovepump (and later a vinyl version) will cover three years of backlogged material from the noisy experimenters. In the present, Clipd Beaks continue to spread their riotous din along the West Coast and across the country on a national tour that takes them into the dark void of the unknown (Fargo, N.D. for instance) and back again — something the Beaks have been familiar with since their incubation.

www.myspace.com/clipdbeaks