Heave Media

Beast Tries To Do Things Differently

Rap and Rock mash-ups can make you cringe but, they're not so bad here. For the most part.

Beast

Beast

Released on Mar 03, 2009

Wikipedia; being the source of all things true and well...mostly untrue, has this to say about Beast, the side project of vocalist Betty Bonifassi and drummer Jean-Phi Gonclaves: 

Beast has been described as "an experimental hip-hop project filled with trip-hop-style down-tempo electronica, aggressive guitars and loud drum beats. 

The article that the document cites reveals some other tidbits about the approach the duo took to writing and performing the album but wikipedia’s description alone could be a cause for worry. It might seem like a mash-up of so many styles and genres that the album is poised to be a rather ambiguous blob of sound. Hence why Wikipedia and most generalizations about this band fail to point to fact that this band does not even remotely come close to capitalizing on the trip-hop stylings of band’s like Massive Attack or Portishead. Rather the band chooses to eschew this for a more standard, crisp production and performance. The album feels varied; pulling influences from various genres, yet maintains its own style and grace. 

The electronica label on the album is particularly interesting to take note of because there are quite a few electronic flourishes and elements through the album. These ‘flourishes’ only serve to support the main elements of Beast’s sound - the guitar, drums and vocals. The duo keeps the music grounded in analog sounds - everything here can translate to some sort of crunchy guitar or bass-riff and almost all the drum patterns can translate easily to live performances. And because electronic sounds can tend to be very disconnected from any sort of human emotion (thank you Kraftwerk) - it’s refreshing to see Beast pull, twist, and blend analogous and digital sounds. It lends the music a very aggressive and raw quality not normally associated with electronic music. 

So on to the songs themselves. Album opener “Devil” sees Bonifassi bursting through the gates with crisp percussion backing her up. The opener is probably a misnomer for the rest of the album because it really is the most ‘rock-esque’ track on the album. ‘Finger Prints’ is a highlight and is the closest the album gets to anything resembling trip-hop. With particular sections diving into bass-heavy moodiness and Bonifassi spewing lyrics like she thinks she’s Mos Def - and somehow it works. ‘Microcyte’ works similar textures with a delicate piano that works its way through the song.  

‘Mr. Hurricane’ is another interesting track that works a combination of funk, hip-hop, and rock. ‘Out of Control’ sounds like a B-Side off a Gorillaz album (it’s a moody take on ‘Feel Good Inc.’). From there on out, the album works heavy bass, heavy drum tracks, and Bonifassi’s ‘rapping’ until the final track ‘Satan.’

‘Satan’ plays the same tricks with the bass and drums but tinges everything with a gospel-influenced vocal performance and a blues-ish guitar lick. It ultimately points to the success and failures of this album. While it’s welcoming to see how the band blends the various genres and sounds into really interesting compositions - sometimes the homage to these specific genres seems so forced and so contrived that it reveals the underlying issue of misconstrued appropriation. It’s an experiment on the superficial qualities of music - how to blend various and distinct sounds. Great music transcends more than just sound - it’s effects are measured by the way it carries itself and how it communicates with the individual - the sound just being a medium. The duo sometimes miss this connection - but that doesn’t mean it ain’t one beast of a record to listen to.

Posted by Danny Lopez on Mar 24, 2009 @ 6:30 am