Earlier this month, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons released her excellent solo album Lives Outgrown, and it turns out that’s not the only entry into the Portishead extended universe this year. Today, Beak> — the long-running project headed up by Geoff Barrow, alongside Billy Fuller and Will Young — have surprise-released a new album, >>>>, their follow-up to 2018’s >>>.

“This is the fourth Beak> studio album, imaginatively titled >>>>,” the band wrote in a statement. “At its core we always wanted it to be head music – listened to as an album, not as individual songs. This is why we are releasing this album with no singles or promo tracks.” They continued:

The recording and writing initially began in a house called Pen Y Bryn in Talsarnau, Wales in the fallout from the weirdness of the COVID days. Remote and with only ourselves and the view of Portmeirion in the distance, we got to work.

With the opening track, “Strawberry Line” (our tribute to our dear furry friend Alfie Barrow, who appears on the albums cover) as the metronomic guide for the album, we then resumed recording, as before, at Invada studios in Bristol, whilst still touring around Europe and North/South America.

After playing hundreds of gigs and festivals over the years we felt that touring had started to influence our writing to the point we weren’t sure who we were anymore. So we decided to go back to the origins of where we were at on our first album – with zero expectations and just playing together in a room.

Hopefully we have achieved this.

We begin touring the album in November playing the album in full, which we’ve never done before. Yes, we will probably still play “Wulfstan II” at the end.

See you there.

Listen below.

>>>> is out now via Temporary Residence Ltd.