$ O $

2011-06-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

THIS IS DUSK

SET ME ON FIRE

A World Without End

2010-12-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

Download The Record Here:

A World Without End

2010-11-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

RAP
GUTS
DREAMZ
FRENDZ
POWER

2010-10-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

LIVE TAPE RECORDING OF OUR SET IN LA 10/17/10

halfway

2010-10-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

2010-09-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Elements

The Rickshaw

Neumo's

Holocene

Hemlock

Spaceland

.........

2010-08-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

so, we've been doing our thing. summer has been good.

we went and visited our birth land (Minnesota) and played some shows.

we got voted "best noise band" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Scott's recording our friends, raccoons, first full length, in which we all dabble cameo-wise, and it's sounding killer.

working on some upcoming releases...

PIECE, our 'lost' ep should be out on vinyl this fall.

we will be doing a short west coast tour with Indian Jewelry as support for Holy Fuck the second week in October, our first since we released 'To Realize'...

other than that, we're in that always-refreshing zone where we get all conceptual and free at the same time and start developing new music.

...so it's back to school for us and you and everything.

..the snake eats itself again.

trust.

X, Nick Barbeln (that's B-A-R-B-E-L-N, you fucking assholes)

NEXT LIVE SUMMER JAM

2010-07-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

should be fun.

playing below the stairs, i believe.

excellent fish and chips.

-nkc

Tape Review from Chris Koenig

2010-06-23T20:20:00.001-07:00

A World Without End by Clipd Beaks is like a veil that has been placed over your head while the band’s sonic drudge repeatedly thud you with each muffled peck.

You should be glad the beaks are indeed no longer lethal from Scott, Nick, and Ray of Clipd Beaks. They created a sonic tar of emotional soundscapes in 2010 with their latest full-length album, To Realize. Their latest release, A World Without End, is the album’s companion of b-sides, demos, and outtakes released by the band in collaboration with Slanty Shanty Records and is strictly limited to 100 copies.

Formed in 2003 in Minnesota, Clipd Beaks is now a Californian three piece, gorgeously trudging through the atmospheric apocalypse. They incorporate drone, atmospheres, tribal rhythms, and post-punk beats into a unique amalgam that has never surfaced on your local radio station – but that is OK, because that is where we do not want them.

Like a soundtrack to a cult movie (Eraserhead or Apocalypse Now comes to mind) Clipd Beaks weave in and out of the surreal and force us to question our own reality. A World Without End is no different. Songs like “Alien” and “New Strangler” demand urgency and pick up where Ian Curtis and crew left off. “Epic Blues” is almost tribal, pulsating to a Throbbing Gristle-type fear. One could get lost in the emotional labyrinth that “In Love” creates. “Murder Boat”, which is an early version of “Home” (off of To Realize) is ripe, raw, and powerful (it made me wish I could have lost my virginity to it). And songs like “Foam Henge” leave a mysterious unanswered question lingering, like a David Lynch film, but you are satisfied more because of it.

Clipd Beaks are a true band…they don’t fit in anywhere. This compilation is an action, not a reaction. The physical format alone demands attention…I had to sit in my car in the garage to listen to it (the only cassette player I still have). A World Without End opens another door in understanding and appreciating To Realize. It is a psychedelic Joy Division daydream, and as the liner notes artwork indicates, up somewhere in the atmosphere. So, wipe the tar outta your ears, put the little circular Band Aids on those peck marks, and make room on your music shelf…2” by 4” to be exact.

-Chris Koenig

"What kind of music do you play?"

2010-06-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

photo by Dave Martin AP

Not to take advantage, but to derive some use out of this latest disaster in our world.

This image reminds me of Clipd Beaks

We're sure to not run out of inspiration.

It is important to live and love as much as possible, even if the world is ending.

,Nck

*(see "Jamn" and "On One" from To Realize...)

NEW VIDEO : "HOME"

2010-06-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

look

or maybe this one's better, i don't know...

giant shwag fest

Anyways, this was one of the best days of my life, which I can only now say in retrospect, because the day-of was pretty grueling.

Thanks a million to Nathan and Eric, two brilliant men.

NEW RELEASE

2010-05-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

A WORLD W/OUT END

SUNDAY WAS

2010-05-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

..the other night, we played a weird show that was pretty cool.

Hemlock//// Scott was sick, so we assembled Nathan from Ross' band Ned, plus Nick and Stefan from Raccoons. Straight up jammage,, where in which i studied for a school presentation on Betty and Barney Hill, famous alien abduction case.

Two bands from MPLS that formed around the time we left town in 05 shared the bill. Super nice dudes, check the shit out...

Vampire Hands

good underwater grooves with moments of guitar efficiency. tight band. i can see them being huge,, Chris shared some Humbolt with me before their set...

Daughters of the Sun

three piece of sonic dosage. awesome pirates hitting drums and strngs hard, Nick played with no shoes and Bennet knew who Betty and Barney Hill were. PS Nick saved my guitar. Thanks dude

IT RULED

2010-05-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

We played the Great American Music Hall in SF last night. It was a good time! We've always wanted to play there because it's so beautiful, historic, etc. The people who run that joint (at least the one's we dealt with) were totally down. Big ups especially to Josh and Mary for being instant homies with us..

Anyways, it was real cool to get a soundcheck, and fed food and beer...

We liked our set, I'm sure opinions were mixed in the crowd (aren't they always?) but some dudes sort of slammed danced, so yeah.

Fuck Buttons headlined. Nice guys from London. Their sound was MASSIVE. Some people in the crowd rave-danced to them (but not enough.)

One day people will be free again, and dance around in public, right?

peace, nick

below: ceiling, marquee markd, and chillin in the barenaked ladies room (seriously)

2010-05-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Vid from 4.30 show (thanks David from Jerk)

2010-05-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

ride the pigeon

dear diary

2010-05-02T00:04:00.000-07:00

...sometimes you do a show that means something more than the average one to you...

we played with sightings and bill orcutt last night at the hemlock. it's a good feeling that's inside my (our?) body. was a great time, sightings we're nice dudes. was cool to play with a band I've been into since 2002, rummaging around @ the church (RIP) in Minneapolis. we all appreciate how they work with their sound and how it's changed over the years. if you have no idea, start anywhere in their world of music output...

orcutt too, really great/unique. a veteran, he was in harry pussy. was one of his first solo appearances in over a decade i guess... was a room of respectful listeners to some serious alien blues.

we had fun too. all-improvised set. filling up the room with some dark gray water noise. scott locked the groove, ray drove the piece, ross offered up, i tried to stay tru. some dude in the audience was hecklin, sayin dumb shit, fuck that dude.

ahhh, spring feels good.

hope you are.

somebody get us out of here,

have us over..

,nick

"HOME" Video

2010-04-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Nathan Budde and Eric Luken flew up from LA this last weekend to kick out a music video for us. It was a day of cold, hard work and ultimate living. This time we made use of West Oakland's neglected underpasses with their discarded treasures and alien-world appeal. We're excited to see what the guys come up with. Here's a list of what was involved:

barbecue sauce
chocolate syrup
mustard
coffee grounds
nude nylons
cindy sherman book
sheets
booze
flashlights
doll hair
strawberries
garbage
cops
pink-eye

freed remix

2010-04-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

We did a Health Remix.
Check it.

Whats on your mind?

2010-04-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

we are currently working on a tape to be released on slanty shanty. cassette, not digital.
smooth, crisp, hysteria-seagulls sailing in the head sphere.
2 realize b-sides/demos/jam-takes. limit of 100.
dust off yr old machines, take off those ugly white-rimmed sunglasses and suck up the sun or lack there of and dream of a world pure of twee-crap-melody.
much love to the haters.
excited about this,
should be out before independence day...

,eh nicholas

NEW FREEJAZZ LONGPLAY

2010-03-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

listen now or download, dub, and drive

(this ones like exorcising a smear)

WOMB MOONS

2010-03-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

NEW DOPE WRITING/MUSIC TRAK

2010-02-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

our friends tex and erika of indian jewelry just included us in an informational site they've created which showcases bands they dig. Check out their digs, read our interview, and then troll on over to the music link at bottom where the first dose of Womb Moons, our junk tracks, resides for the download. rough cuts from eminem studios and beyond!

click this:
SWAMPBATS

xxx , nick

ANOTHER NIGHT/ANOTHER DREAM

2010-02-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

Thanks Steve, the House of Rooz, Cherry St.Mary and Raccoons for providing the space for us to waft out the new release live-style Oakland style last night.

Across the street was a giant "cop tour bus" parked and running that said Oakland weed and seed on the side.

Noided me out but sparked my interest...

info here. note the giant dollar sign wreath in the story:

oakland weed and seed

,nixks

BEST REVIEW YET!

2010-02-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

Thank you Gabe Vodicka wherever you are!! Finally someone pushes us over the Liars hill we'd been marooned on for some time. Awesome to read a review that took its time and listened and got it! Minus my name getting spelled wrong as always, i'm in a satisfaction zone!

love nick

Tiny Mixtapes Review of Clipd Beaks

To Realize

[Lovepump United; 2010]

by Gabe Vodicka

Rating:
Links: Clipd Beaks - Lovepump United

When Clipd Beaks raged onto the scene a few years back, critics instantly lumped the Oakland-based three-piece into the HEALTH-y school of rhythmic, monochromatically abrasive noise rock — the L.A.-centric flavor of the moment that was all the blog rage at the time. It was an easy but patently unfair comparison; where the zillion bands emerging from The Smell scene seemed fixated on being as manic and aggressive as possible, the Beaks seemed to possess something pure and underlying, an understanding of texture and melody that set them at arm’s length from their SoCal compatriots.

To Realize, the superb sophomore full-length from the band, finds them wholly embracing what was once merely hinted at. Foremost, this is an album, not just a collection of songs. In fact, it’s more like one long song. Every track crawls along at the same zombie-turtle’s pace and is imbued with the same darkly melodic motifs that pop up again and again. An obvious touchstone is Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead. But where that record trafficked in directness and empty space, Clipd Beaks fills the hell out of any and all voids. “Home,” the album’s fifth track and one of its finest, displays the band in peak sonic form. Woozy and decadent, the song rolls through six minutes of noisy glory, layering guitars on vocals on drums on trumpets on keyboards to a huge, terrifying climax. The song feels like the photograph on the cover of To Realize: a little bit ominous, but weirdly incandescent, all rainbow-hued and charcoal black.

Where Clipd Beaks particularly excel is in keeping this cacophonic mess from becoming claustrophobic or overbearing. Instead, everything seems open and airy, somehow light against such a weighty musical backdrop. An acknowledged influence on the group is the timeless and underappreciated proto-noisers This Heat; their fingerprints are all over the Beaks’ sound, especially in this way. The two groups share a unique sense of time and space, as well as a knack for creating dense, rich textures with no overload. The band’s impeccable sense of texture shines throughout the record, from the languid, psychedelic swirl of “Blood,” with its constant, anguished low groan; to “Jamn,” which invokes both Alice Coltrane and Spacemen 3 but sounds like neither. Trumpets show up at various points on To Realize, usually with a sweetly-tinged, cool jazzish sort of melody that lopes along, adding to the album’s eerie, yellowed atmosphere. It’s a potentially awkward aspect to a record that nonetheless never once comes across as cloying or forced.

To Realize also marks the first time that the vocals have held a spot front and center for Clipd Beaks, and thankfully it’s a wholly welcome change. “Down in a violent world/ I’ve been known to bleed,” vocalist Nick Barbein moans on the sprawling “On One.” Album closer “Shot on a Horse” is once of the best closing tracks in recent times: Western-tinged, lonely, and creepy as fuck. “I wait for the morning to come,” Barbein croons through an ocean of reverb. “It comes.” In a way, this lyric encapsulates what makes To Realize something truly extraordinary, which is its ability to find solace in stagnation, to transform seconds into hours into days and so on; to simply hold still.

It’s tempting to dwell on suspected influences and surface-level comparisons when writing about music. Sometimes this is a result of creative laziness, but it is also because — let’s face it — most music isn’t good or imaginative enough to merit a serious discussion based on its intrinsic significance alone. So, it's a great, uplifting feeling when a band manages to truly surprise, when a record outstrips its influences and a band truly becomes its own damn self. To Realize is one such record, and Clipd Beaks is one such band.

2010-01-30T04:11:00.000-08:00

holy shit, thanks to all the bands that played last night and all the people who came.

also:

BLOOD VIDEO

xoNICK

real ink

2010-01-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

TO REALIZE is now an official release!

2010-01-26T01:32:00.001-08:00

It feels good and weird.

We wanna thank LPU for the supplies, belief, and the final product in it's various formats.

We hope some people go deep into it.

XO Nick

(Scott wrote some great words about where we're coming from and how we're sometimes described by music writers in some wack ways, see them below..)

Some randomness on the eve of the release of "To Realize"

As you may or may not know, Clipd Beaks turned 7-years-old last week (1.20.10). When we started, we really had no expectations in regards to our future, and we had few goals other than to just explore new territory, at least sonically, and maybe personally (subconsciously).

I don't think any of us ever thought that the music we making would one day actually be the medium/vehicle to which we explored and grew within our own skin. And through 7 years, it's now quite difficult to separate our lives from the music; they are intimately tied to one another. The music has become about our lives, and our lives have become about the music

I recently read some reviews that questioned whether or not we might be part of some recent "call for the wild and weird" fad, or something like that...essentially wondering if we're jumping on a trendy train. One reviewer even postulated that Nick (singer/lyrics man) is either a shaman or a "sham-man", and that time will tell which of the two is true. Granted it's hard to detect sarcasm or to what extent people are serious in print, I was nonetheless a little hurt, because these assessments are completely off from who we are as a band and as people.

Don't get me wrong, having the opportunity to have our music heard beyond the walls of our practice space is amazing. It's already light years beyond the few expectations we had when we started the band.

But I nonetheless feel that's not even close to a fair judgement. We've been around for too long to be challenged like that. It's been 7 years of us just doing what we do, and that's too long of a time, and way too calculated of a goal, - with such a small pay-off (indie hype) - , to be credible. The shallowness of such a goal would most likely not be met by 7 years of relative obscurity, consistently unattended/poorly attended shows across the entire country, and being utterly broke. Moreover, none of this has changed: We're still relatively obscure, playing to few, and pretty much broke.

And though it's true that we oftentimes have a sense of humor about our music, that should not and can not be a measurement against our sincerity...We are, and always have been, unapologetically sincere about our music (and our musical tastes, for that matter!)

Like I said, our music has become intimately intertwined with our own lives. So it's no surprise that some listeners might pick up on something that could be thought of as "spirituality" within our musical and/or lyrical content . But the depth of that "spirituality" within our songs/lyrics was never meant, on our part, to transcend beyond those songs/lyrics, or our own personal experiences. We are nowhere near what a real shaman is capable of.

We do not think we are, or want to be, that kind of band.

However, if you have an amazing spiritual experience and our sounds are the soundtrack, thats fucking great, but it's not intentional on our part.

All said, this does not come from a place of bitterness. And I know this may seem kind-of self-important, but on the eve of the release of our new record, I can't help but feel to make some reflections regarding what some people think we're all about vs who we really are.

We are really just down-to-earth guys, just doing what we have done for 7 years (and hopefully many more years to come). If you can get anything out of our music, on any level, that makes me really happy.

I really hope you enjoy "To Realize". It was, and now is, a chapter in our lives

-Scott

2009-12-24T00:38:00.000-08:00

2009-12-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

TOUGH TIMES

our next MUSIC VIDEO

2009-11-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

Filmed a video for "Blood" over the weekend in the East Bay's beautiful Sibley Volcanic Park.
Our friend Nathan Budde drove up from LA to direct/shoot.
Grass was stained red, dogs we're confused.
More on this later....

FRM BAD BRIDGE VIBEZ NITE. HAPPY HALLOWEENING

2009-10-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

2009-10-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

SETLIST FRM LAST NIGHT/HEMLOCK

STRANGLER
DUST
ATOMS
DESERT HIGHWAY MUSIC
BLOOD
BROKE LIFE

GOODTIMES/ THANKS 2
XPRMNTL DNTL SKOOL,
CASEY.BRIAN,
MARISSA,
3 DRINK TICKETS,

post by nick

2009-10-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

D

A
N

K
SWAMP.

TRYING/FINDING/BLEEDING/DUSTINYREYE
L I DS

WILDMOONSRCUMMING\WILDEYESRWATCHING

NEU EGO GHETTO

POSTDE BY: NICK

$ O $

A World Without End

halfway

Elements

The Rickshaw

Neumo's

Holocene

Hemlock

Spaceland

.........

NEXT LIVE SUMMER JAM

Tape Review from Chris Koenig

"What kind of music do you play?"

NEW VIDEO : "HOME"

NEW RELEASE

SUNDAY WAS

IT RULED

Vid from 4.30 show (thanks David from Jerk)

dear diary

"HOME" Video

freed remix

Whats on your mind?

NEW FREEJAZZ LONGPLAY

NEW DOPE WRITING/MUSIC TRAK

ANOTHER NIGHT/ANOTHER DREAM

BEST REVIEW YET!

Tiny Mixtapes Review of Clipd BeaksTo Realize

real ink

TO REALIZE is now an official release!

our next MUSIC VIDEO

FRM BAD BRIDGE VIBEZ NITE. HAPPY HALLOWEENING

Tiny Mixtapes Review of Clipd Beaks

To Realize