By turns visceral and delicate, melodic and powerfully bleak, Beacon are almost impossible to pin down.
Perhaps that's why Ghostly International sought out the Brooklyn duo. Real names Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett, the pair craft music where savagery is waiting to be unleashed, but beauty is also never far behind.
New EP 'L1' is a wonderfully abstract document, continuing to engage and surprise. Out now, you can stream it below and then check out a Track-By-Track guide penned for Clash by Beacon.
'Fault Lines'
Jacob: 'Fault Lines' was the first of a suite of songs Tom showed up with to our demo sessions. This song really laid the groundwork for a new approach to rhythm we started exploring while writing this record. After a lot of touring, we were looking to capture some of the magnetism of our live performance in recorded form. Fault Lines seemed like a perfect start to this venture. We played the song live before committing to its final recorded form. That's not something that we often do, but it definitely gave us ideas for structural changes and extra synth work.
Thomas: We booked our first show of 2014 in February in NYC and felt like we had to play something new after touring for 50+ dates in the US and EU supporting The Ways We Separate. We used 'Fault Lines' to break the ice for writing new material and debuted it at that show. It was written with all that touring in mind - a direct reaction to it. Our ideas and goals for the kind of live band we want to be are infused into it.
'L1'
Jacob: 'L1' was the second half of that suite of ideas. I get real excited about sounds that end up permeating the record throughout, like little sonic threads holding disparate ideas together. There is a synth sound in this song that was generated from the Analog Four that makes an appearance throughout the EP. It's a special moment when you hear something and immediately know it's now part of the family. It acts like a theme you keep returning to, slowly reinforcing the mood through different iterations.
Thomas: I was getting excited about some of the sounds we were building on the Analog Four right around when we started 'L1'. In this case its the muted percussive stab underneath the other instruments in this song. Not quite a bass, not a lead, but really moody, and expressive. Using that sound to ground it, 'L1' went in a different direction for us as far as it's rhythm, and became an inviting place to write a new kind of vocal melody over.
'Minor Structures'
Jacob: 'Minor Structures' typifies this new approach to rhythms we were thinking about when writing this record. It's probably the song that sits furthest away from our past work. It has two main percussive patterns pushing the groove along, one of which is constantly teetering on pushing into the red. Al Carlson, who mixed the record, did a great job adding just the right amount of dirt to the vocals in order to match the grittier production. There were definitely conscious decisions to not overproduce this record, to leave a little hand in the sound, and this track is probably the most representative of that consideration.
Thomas: We kept coming back to this track because of it's kinetic energy and frantic percussion. It sits at a D&B tempo and each instrument is moving and twisting in different directions but always returning to lock into the last 4 beats at the end of every 16 bar loop. That release and control is still really compelling. It's the kind of song that we'll say "well this will be really difficult but really fun to play live" and be inspired to finish it.
'Better Love'
Jacob: 'Better Love' is probably my favorite cut on the record. It has a lot of qualities that exist in some of our older work. Its' sensuality and atmosphere feel very much part of the language we've cultivated over the last few records. The beat has a very unique bounce to it, with its huge sub hitting in all sorts of unexpected places. One of the late additions to the song was this really atmospheric slide guitar that leads the song to its end. I remember playing it with a little ceramic bowl that had a bunch of loose change in it because we didn't own a proper slide. Textual guitar work is something that's been a growing interest of mine, making that coexist with some of the colder aesthetics of our sound always feels like a nice touch of warmth to an otherwise synth heavy production.
Thomas: I sent the demo over to Jake and he was really enthusiastic about it. Which for me is great, because without that confirmation it may have stayed in my massive well of demos that are never realized. The tempo is in the 200s in the project, so that when I started writing the beat these frenetic kicks could fall on unexpected 32nds. There's other ways to do that of course, but having a really fast clock/tempo on a slow jam can open up interesting possibilities.
'Only Us'
Jacob: On every record there is a song that ends up embodying all the ideas that surface throughout. 'Only Us' is that cut and serves as this kind of summary, a space for the collective ideas that run throughout the EP to coexist. Many hours were labored over getting this juke inspired groove to have just enough movement to support Tom's bigger vocal melody. One of my favorite moments is when the bottom falls out as if the song has come to a sudden end, and then this slow, churning atmosphere builds into a really swung outro.
Thomas: I wrote the synth pattern on our Prophet 08 a couple days before we left for tour in 2013 and it lived on the computer as an 8 bar loop for another 6 months. When I was working, I would attempt to turn it into something but was too scared I would fuck it up and ruin whatever mystery it contained. When we finally worked on it together, that tension went away and became our EP closer.
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'L1' EP is out now.
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