El Ángel Exterminador is the second independent release by The Beige. The Vancouver pop/jazz quintet’s new recording charts a journey through some surreal, atmospheric landscapes, offering glimpses of madness, hunger, love and death along the way. With El Ángel Exterminador, The Beige presents the great Canadian feel-not-so-good album.
Press previews of El Ángel Exterminador:
""Incredibly atmospheric fare from this Vancouver quintet that employs eclectic instrumentation...lyrics are pure poetry that bend and shape to fit the angular rhythms. A truly original sound. 4/5" -- Greg Potter, TV Week
"Album 2 from this "pop/jazz" quintet is moody, atmospheric, orchestral and, well, depressing. But it's also swinging, marching and altogether a joy to listen to. Songwriter Rick Maddocks knows how to craft a tasty dirge." -- Stuart Derdeyn, Vancouver Province
"A spooky, dust storm of Latin-tinged drinking songs, work songs, love songs and death songs that would fit nicely on the record shelf alongside Calexico and Howe Gelb. There are plenty of inspired moments fuelling The Beige music machine." --Michael Kissinger, Vancouver Courier
"El Ángel Exterminador is a CD I could listen to all day long...If you are looking for some original music that's anything but boring, with intense imagery, theatric or cinematic compositional style, and a wide range of elements, this album will not disappoint (5/5)" -- Nathan Stafford, The Skinny Magazine
"CD of the week: If the band's debut was a little like its namesake — a kind of pastel — this sequel is more colourful. At least it's more rhythmically diverse, which is indicative of a band feeling more confident as it has developed. With an elegant Mexican flavour in the song "Este Pais" adding to an exotic mix of oom pahs and keyboard swirls, El Angel Exterminador can be as warmly languid as it is sometimes unsettling." -- Tom Harrison, Vancouver Province
The songs of El Ángel Exterminador were penned by singer-songwriter/author Rick Maddocks. After publishing his fiction collection Sputnik Diner (Knopf Canada) and crafting songs for The Beige’s 01, Maddocks found his writing shaped by a growing fascination with rhythm, the darkening cloud of news headlines, and the films of Luis Buñuel. The Beige’s lush sound was soon coloured by minor keys, murmurs of field recordings, and surreal imagery. Maddocks co-produced El Ángel Exterminador with The Beige guitarist Jon Wood (whose other credits include Herald Nix and Rodney Decroo). The result is a unique, “apopalyptic” and sometimes funky brew. Yet for those who thirst for comparisons, the songs on El Ángel Exterminador could call to mind such distant touchstones as Calexico and Fela Kuti, or Van Morrison tailing Dark Side-era Pink Floyd down a Guadalajara backstreet.
The Beige’s music is subtle, moody and complex. More introvert than extrovert, more deep and mysterious than flashy and loud. This is serious music, with literary trappings, but it also knows a good groove when it hears one. The quintet's live shows feature broad strokes of improvisation, weaving together off-kilter pop and jazz, narrative and groove, traditional and avant-garde. The Beige may appeal to a great uncharted audience out there, in the wild dark yonder, where they welcome one and all.
On Saturday, January 23, 2010, The Beige performed a special CD release concert for El Ángel Exterminador at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Vancouver. A beautiful Gothic revival church known for its labyrinth, St. Paul's provided an ideal environment for The Beige's layered, complex but moving music. It was an unforgettable show featuring "Road", "The Exterminating Angel" and other songs from the new record, plus brand new songs like "Our Pale Destroyer" and older curios such as "Lord I Wish I Was" and "Hammer in a Bell". Guest musicians Matt Brain (percussion) and Marc Lindy (tuba and sousaphone) added colour to The Beige's already rich palette of songs, as well as to the euphoric encore, the old spiritual, "The Last Mile of the Way". For images of the show, captured by audience members, check out The Beige's Facebook page -- www.facebook.com/thebeige.ca
"01", the quintet’s independent debut cd, featured a dream-like, gentle sound which prompted The Vancouver Sun to proclaim, “The Beige is a new musical force.” In the summer of 2006, "01" was unveiled in a sold-out, one-of-a-kind sound and light show at Vancouver’s MacMillan Space Centre, where the band played in darkness beneath projected constellations. "01" went on to receive extensive airplay on CBC radio and garnered widespread critical praise, both at home and internationally. The Georgia Straight called the album “a gorgeously spacious thing.... as melodic and lyrically striking as Wilco at its most incisive--and more overtly catchy." Americana UK said, "A record that fuses popular and experimental forms into a coherent whole is a rare thing, and this is a record of rare beauty."
The Beige rose from the still-smouldering ashes of the alt-country outfit Palace Flophouse in 2001. Singer/songwriter and guitarist Rick Maddocks, Jon Wood and the other original members soon recruited double bass player Mark Haney, whose performing background included stints with mariachi bands and the Vancouver Symphony. A jazzy, more open interpretation of the Beige’s roots-based music began to take shape around the other key ingredients: Maddocks’s cinematic compositions and wide-ranging voice, Woods’s lush treatment of stringed instruments, “Geoff Gilliard’s restrained drumming and Andrew Arida’s luxuriously retro-sounding keyboards”. As Toronto’s This Magazine says, “It's apparent that this Vancouver quintet is no gang of inexperienced players.”
Read more...