Beneath the Beach

Musical taste is highly subjective – and one reason why the Listening Post is so endlessly fascinating. We’re gradually building up a loose community of volunteer critics who show up here and give their love to the tracks we pick from each week’s inbox . You never know which tracks will catch their fancy but this one, I have to say, was right up my street. Straight in, no messing, with an electronic smack between the eyes. Urgent energy, dense layered playing and declaiming vocals. The surprises keep coming: just when you think you know what’s coming next, they derail your expectations. A huge amount of thought and sheer creative inventiveness has gone into the writing, playing and arrangement. Some might sneer that Dust In Modern Eyes is a bit clever and intellectual. But that, dear readers, is exactly why I like it so much. - Fresh On The Net

As a fan and writer of the math rock genre, it’s all too frequent to hear one word echoed so frequently throughout write-ups and conversations. You may have already guessed it, as that word is ‘Foals’ and is usually flanked by the words ‘sounds like’, ‘reminds of’, ‘Antidotes’, etc etc. Beneath The Beach, a four piece from London who met and formed at Westminster University in 2011, are the latest bunch that you might hear banded in such colloquy.

This is not to demean their sound whatsoever though, which is simply just fun, fresh and exciting. Entitled Ubiquitous Meter, the EP certainly does try to get everywhere at once; they classify their work as ‘Post Dance Math Step’, which may leave you raising your eyebrows. However don’t let this ostentatious labeling of themselves put you off, as this is a delightful 10 minutes of math tinged indie rock instrumentalism.

Packed to the brim with multiple layers in each of the three primary songs on offer, structures regularly chop and change that constantly leave you guessing where the arrangement could go next. Beats are subtracted and added back once more whilst maintaining a natural flow, which is all you can ask for a band of this nature. Every song is an amalgamation of riffs and ideas, however all are stalked by sampled voices over the top, which try and give the record a slightly ‘intellectual’ feel.

Despite the band quite obviously trying a bit hard to be unnecessarily pretentious, Ubiquitous Meter will undoubtedly get your feet, head and body moving with its attack of triplet guitar rhythms and electronic dance beat samples. Despite lacking a strong identity and USP at this early stage, ‘Ubiquitous Meter’ still shows a lot of promise; it’s an instantly enjoyable and accessible EP for fans of math rock or not. Just like Foals back in 2007. - 7BitArcade

Beneath The Beach tag their music as “Post-Dance-Math-Step” - we think it’s more like “pre-Foals” but agree with the math step term (get rid of the “post” though, guys, only bloggers can use that term). Anyhow, they are a four-piece from London who managed to get past our “we’re not that fond of guitars in music”-weirdness and should earn some credit for just that already (unless you’re an all-girl group (Warpaint, Haim) or Foals, we’re hard to please when you make guitar-music). They combine math-step with samples from Phillip Glass and American Psycho (amongst others) which gives the package an interesting twist. A debut 4-track EP is out on November 26, yet you can already stream it in full below. - disco naïveté