A Feather of Down

Instead of resorting to the usual twee-indie visual of putting a fucking bird on their CD cover, the Bristol-based art-dub trio Beak went one better and simply named themselves after the most important part of the avian anatomy. Any band that mixes the hazy drone of Neu! and early Public Image, Ltd. is bound to make my goosebumps have their own goosebumps. Some of the songs on their self-titled debut are drastically sparse in their Metal Box-like focus (Ears Have Ears), while others pace themselves into a high-strung motorik gallop (Iron Acton). (Pill even begins with the kind of screechy Mideast violin howl familiar to anyone who got all the way through The Flowers of Romance.) In a perfect world, this would be the soundtrack for waiting rooms and elevators.