Lunch With Beardo- Surrealistic Picnic (FDH Records 2006)

Reportedly hailing from the Planet Lunch, Lunch With Beardo make an unholy racket of deeply spaced-out, euphorically dissonant, and apocalyptically unsettling noises for the postmodern age. This buffet of sounds, in all its alchemical glory, is strewn across the table for easy digestion on their debut full length “Surrealistic Picnic.”

Lunch With Beardo’s origins trace back to 2003 when several veterans of various upstate New York punk and hardcore bands (The Sex Machines, Deprivation, Murdershift) and various other collaborators formed a loose-knit collective to share their love of free-jazz, post-rock, noise, and various other experimental and fringe genres with the world. Easily distinguishing themselves from the region’s somewhat provincial music scene, Lunch With Beardo found themselves equally captivating and confusing new audiences. Their wild, improvisational mixtures of futuristic space-age ambience, pop culture sound collages, outlandish stage antics, and punishing, feedback-laced wall-of-sound theatrics were, to some, refreshing soufflés flown in from outer space to save the fast food nation from the drabness of its schlock and awe. Lunch With Beardo not only performed countless shows in the Hudson Valley, but also embarked on a tour with FDH Records labelmates Humans Are the Worst Invention in Summer 2005 that took them up and down eastern seaboard.

Though the band distributed a high quantity of bootleg quality live performances to interested parties on cassette and CD-R (mostly for free) through the DIY label FDH Records, Lunch With Beardo had not recorded a real “album” until Winter 2005/2006. It was then that band members Jeff Bumiller, Jesse Heffler, Eric “The Ill,” Jon Wazoo, and Timh Gabriele began the three month long process of laying down tracks for what would eventually become “Surrealistic Picnic” (the title is a nod to Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” album, which helped usher in the first psychedelic era). Produced by Eric “The Ill” and mastered by Colin Marston (Infidel?/Castro!, Dysrhythmia), “Surrealistic Picnic” is the ultimate, awesome amalgamation of the band’s past sonic experiments, as well as a concise summary of their vision for the future of what they term “Spaceadelic” music. Divided into three “official communications” from the Planet Lunch, the album begins with “Innocence to Wisdom,” a melancholic hymn whose opening melody foreshadows the dark monolith of sound to come. The riff sets an eerie tone redolent of invading aircraft slowly casting shadows across the bucolic landscape of Middle America like some 1950’s sci-fi film. Soon, somber howls, dubbed-out guitars, aching trumpets, creepy tape loops, primal drumming, wailing drones, and other mysterious, unidentified freeform objects begin to emerge from the ether to form a cosmic powerhouse unrivaled by many of their psychedelic peers.

Lunch With Beardo have served their galactic ear candy at an array of biker bars, art galleries, nightclubs, collective spaces, basements, and college campuses throughout the past few years in support of acts like Wolf Eyes, Prurient, Borbetomagus, Crank Sturgeon, Kites, Mouthus, the USAISAMONSTER, Tides, Growing, Dan Deacon, Guilty Connector, and Carlos Gioffani. The ebb and flow of a Lunch With Beardo performance can fluctuate between a spiritual and whimsical glissando and an orgiastic bedlam of frenzied freakouts complete with violent tantrums of anarchic food-tossing, instrument-wailing, and uncontrolled satanic chanting about peanut butter soldiers, the tyranny of shaving, or the dissolution of western society. Lunch With Beardo is not only nourishment for the ears, but food for the whole body. Together, the band assembles an unrelenting physical force that bleeds out of one’s earphones and demands attention. It is safe to say Lunch With Beardo have arrived, and so the trip begins.

1. The First Official Communication from the Planet Lunch; Innocence to Wisdom (click to Download)

2. The Second Official Communication from the Planet Lunch; They Ate Wonders of the World

3. The Third Official Communication from the Planet Lunch; Space is the Plate

PRESS:

"Inhabiting a fucked-up landscape of post rock, free-noise, psychedelic chaos, Lunch With Beardo, employ every effect known to man (and possibly some that don't) to create the unholy racket that is “Surrealistic Picnic”, a spaced out, euphoric and unsettling album that creeps and writhes from the speakers. Seeking nirvana through oblivion the band take no prisoner, Tibetan Ritual music colliding with ATM and Sun Ra in undiscovered corners of the galaxy. Final Track the 26 minute “Space Is The Plate” starts of in deep meditation drone mode before exploding into a dissonant howl of psyched out fury, that threatens to re-arrange your molecular structure, low magic of the highest order."- Terrascope

"Lunch With Beardo was created in 2003 from the ruins of some New York punkbands – namely The Sex Machines, Deprivation and Murdershift – whose members shared a crush on psychedelic music, free jazz and post rock. On Surrealistic Picnic they unleash their collective sense of otherworldly music on the unsuspecting masses. Consisting of 3 tracks, which are titled to be official communications from the planet Lunch (don’t ask..) that flow seamlessly into one another, Surrealistic Picnic makes for quite a ride. The first ‘official communication’, called Innocence to Wisdom starts of with the sound of a spaceship landing and aliens talking. Then a slowly strummed guitar comes in and we’re off for a psychedelic trip on planet Lunch. From thereof, little reminds us of our lives back on Earth, and anything is possible. Guitar work that - oddly enough - recalls Neil Young’s Dead Man Soundtrack on quite a few occasions, is backed by deformed and slowed down voices that repeat the same phrases over and over. While the second track seems to be more of a transition than a real track, the third one, Space is the Plate, seems to be the centre piece of the album. The track runs for an exhausting 26 minutes, filled with dissonant noises and, dare I say, an almost melancholic undercurrent that reminds me of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in all its sober resignation, despite the storms going on on the foreground. After the infinite ebb and flow and objects flying around-feel, the album neatly closes down with an easy strummed acoustic guitar, much as if you were coming home from a long trip to places you wouldn’t dare to tell a soul about out of fear of being declared mad. Like a planet called Lunch for example. There’s an awful lot going on throughout this entire album, that makes you encounter new and interesting stuff each time again. In fact there’s so much going on, that on first listen everything seems to be just a big pile of noise. Repeated listens show that the pile is constructed very well-considered and that few things are actually out of place here. Sitting the whole thing through makes for an exhausting but rich and fulfilling experience. A very interesting release"- Semtex Magazine

"Lunch with Beardo play deeply troubling and spaced out music. 3 tracks in 46 minutes designed to fuck up your mind! Don’t play this music for schizophrenic people, please… The CD features 3 tracks on 45 minutes or so, with the last one begging you to kill your stereo after 26 minutes…. The music is dangerous, psychedelic, free form spaced out rock with a bit of punk in the attitude department. Brilliant, insane stuff…"- Aural Innovations #36 May 2007

"Lunch With Beardo
Surrealistic Picnic
FDH Records

This stuff is so bizarre it makes my parts turgid!

Made up of three sections (all entitled "Official Communications from the Planet Lunch"), these works start where Sun Ra left off --in fact, track 3 is subtitled "Space is the Plate"-- and anyone who enjoys disembodied voices, strangled trumpets and random clicks and buzzes will eat this lunch up. Waves of electronics provide a bed for backwards moaning, processed guitars and loops. Fans of Olivia Tremor Control, Metal Machine Music and, generally, all things weird and wonderful will put this on endless repeat.

The rest of you, you’ll run screaming from the room. Such is art.
FDH Records: www.fdhmusic.com"- Ink 19

" EDITOR'S PICK Strap in and prepare yourself for a wild surreal electric parade of a ride. Noise art collage artists Lunch with Beardo aren't afraid to show the darker sides of the post-acid culture with free-jazz delights well behind them. Sort of an ambient noise effort that has cascading and colliding sounds wetting your eardrums, “Surrealistic Picnic” is one of the more strange ambient soundscape albums you may come across but it's a worthy addition to anyone's cosmic cabinet of culture and other alliterative illustrations. "- Smother.net

 "There’s a saying people say about how writing about music is like shitting about taxidermy, which is true, but it’s no problem with this record because: it ain’t music. You’d think it would be from the pictures, where somebody who is probably the “band” has guitars and stuff, but they just use ‘em for making swirly, echoey sounds that add up to some nice, relaxing noise (cup of Sleepytime optional [but pleasant!]). – Cuss Baxter (FDH)"- Razorcake

" Overall Rating: B+
Composition: A-
Sounds: B+
Production Quality: B+
Concept: B+
Packaging: C
I was pleasantly surprised with this release that came my way featuring some self described “space -a-delic” sounds from people who are supposedly rising from the ashes of several dead punk bands. But punk is not what you will find here. Instead Lunch With Beardo plays heavy psychedelic experimental jams that have a post-rock influence. Maybe I just get that from the spacey guitars but they are a major element here. Think a mixture of Skullflower, Flying Saucer Attack and Infidel/Castro.

Although I definitely enjoy the density of “Innocence to Wisdom” with it's heavy wall of fiddling yet tonal guitar, meandering trumpet manipulations, and varied electronics/found sounds that are often times vocal samples, there are moments when Lunch With Beardo provides some much needed space like in the beginning of “They Ate Wonders of the World.” But they do both effectively and you can tell they have a talent for improvisation because the material seems quite focused and cohesive while staying a writhing beast especially when they have all guns firing at once.

The third and final track is the longest and most epic and twisted. “Space is the Plate” has an excellent start with sparse guitar and trumpet augmented by subtle ambient rumbles and booms emerging from the depths of an unknown sphere of existence. The track spans about 26minutes in length and features some great sounds, manipulated bird calls, gurgling moans, and tense drones. It is about half way into the track where you realize that you are no longer floating peacefully in space, but instead are caught in an asteroid storm of twisting static, crashing cymbals, blazing noise, and screaming trumpets. These improvisations have structure and the instrumental performances work so well together. If this is where experimental ensembles and post rock is going these days I don't want to miss the train because this is a talented group that obviously has a focused concept and works extremely well together. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for what they might have in store next."- Blood Ties Web Zine 

" Lunch with Beardo play deeply troubling and spaced out music. 3 tracks in 46 minutes designed to fuck up your mind! Don't play this music for schizophrenic people, please… The CD features 3 tracks on 45 minutes or so, with the last one begging you to kill your stereo after 26 minutes…. The music is dangerous, psychedelic, free form spaced out rock with a bit of punk in the attitude department. Brilliant, insane stuff… "- Lowcut #43

" Here in exhibit A I've coupled up two jewel-cased releases I've received recently, both from the strange American underbelly and both with some eye-catching covers. And both bands I've never heard of until the moment I received the discs. Burnt Hills have received some heavy press from the Wire, Siltblog and Foxy Digitalis among others while Lunch with Beardo have opened mysterious groups with names like Wolf Eyes, Borbetomagus, Mouthus, Prurient, and so on. So I guess it's really my own fault for remaining in the dark but hey, sometimes I too need to be guided in the right direction. Or wrong direction. Or what have you. But at least I got the discs, and that's a start.

"I don't know if they're all full-time members but there's nine whole players listed on the back of Burnt Hills' "To Your Head" album with zany monikers like Buzz Mountain, Professor, Tapes, Ziamaluch, etc and they all play zanily-monikered instruments such as the "blutar", "gertar", "gnutar", "bootar", "glutar" and "steal yr bass". I'm going to let you in on a hot tip and tell you that I think the first for are clever plays on the word "guitar". Another strange thing about this disc is that it lists four tracks on the back, and you can pick different tracks from the album to listen to on their MySpace page, but when I play the album alls I get is one long 38-minute opus. I guess maybe it's split up on the vinyl version but I wouldn't know since that was limited to 99 copies and they're gone by now. At this point in the revue I probably don't even need to tell you what the sound is; you should be able to glean that much from the info provided. But I guess since it's "my job" I can tell you that it's everything you'd expect from nine bored Americans in somebody's garage space with a dangerous amount of noise-makers on hand. In addition to the five guitars (I mean blutars! I mean shoetars! I mean AnzeKopitars!) and bass there's at least one drummer, somebody totally masturbating a tambourine and a heck of a lot of other kitsch I'm not about to try nailing down. Every once and again over the near forty minutes they'll hit on a catchy rhythm (usually led by the bass but sometimes the drummer snags one too) and sorta improvise on it for awhile before it all subtly implodes and they move onto searching for the next riff through song, however intentional or otherwise. Soundwise the band come off as a sloppier, way less eclectic Bardo Pond, or Circle minus the flashes of metal. And it does have somewhat of a Finnish inept/outsider slant to it but what's charming and tolerable when you're from Finland just comes off as tacky when you're American. Hey, I didn't write the rules. If instrumental free-form bros-hangin'-out basement rock-out jamming is your thing, then all aboard.

"Yesterday in class we talked about bands it was too easy for me to lust over (Ettrick, in case you've forgotten) and today we'll talk about a band who makes me hate them on reflex alone. Lunch with Beardo? That's seriously your band's name? Can't it be, like, any three other words in the entire English language put together in succession? You guys should get Matthew Bower or Campbell Kneale on the phone, they're the masters of that stuff. Wait lemme pull up some spam email and see if I can get a band name out of their garbled transmissions...here: "timid five gout loose loud fills / fight below when sight use finer / touch stout those witty gout rises used / don't waint / Bye". Actually those sound more like Melvins lyrics than anything else so I'll let it be. LWB is a group of five guys on various implements such as guitars, bass, drums, tape loops, pedals, trumpets, turntables, theremin, walkie talkie, See N' Say (I thought it was Speak N' Spell?), found instruments...you get the picture. Not entirely unlike the glut of sounds to be found on the previous disc, although LWB isn't nearly so close to overkill - on the contrary, the three tracks here are given plenty of space to stretch out (space indeed, these troopers appear to be on some kind of cosmic voyage and after all they do profess to be from the Planet Lunch...hey wasn't there a jazz guy who claimed to be from another planet or something?). Opening "communication" is called "Innocence to Wisdom" and lets fly with a good thirteen minutes of fuzzy noodly ambience, threating to break out into a krauty orgasm spasm but instead wisps away off into "They Ate Wonders of the World" which is even more chilly with a lot of furrowed-brow catacomb-erecting knob twists and strums, trumpet all sneaking in like nmperign sneaking onto the U.S.S. Enterprise with the help of Alan Silva's Celestrial Communications Orchestra. I dig it. The closing "Space is the Plate" (hey! That sounds familiar too!) pulls gentle chords like Mogwai or Growing might and I started to get a little disappointed thinking the massive payoff would never come but sure it enough it does. About halfway through the track erupts into a noisy but super-slow freak out sesh like a side of an Acid Mothers Temple/Merzbow collaborative played at the slowest possible speed. Shit is equal parts Guru Guru and DJ Screw...swallow it down with that yurple y-yurple y-yurple, know what I mean Gene (Okerland)? Oh gosh...despite my skepticism LWB won me over in the long run, but I'm still going to have to say on the record that I find the band name, album name, and gimmick all very hard to take. But it doesn't really matter what I think, right? Sometimes it's nice to cast off the Cage essayisms and get down to some big dumb American rock. What's the frequency, Kenneth? "- Outerspace Gamelan

"Lunch With Beardo Space-Launches a New Album
By Allison Stevens, Staff Writer

The first time I heard the name, “Lunch With Beardo,” the first thought that came to mind was “what kind of band name is that?” Of all the words in the English language to choose from, “lunch” and “beardo” would be at the bottom of my list. The album title, Surrealistic Picnic, gives you the idea of a holographic lunch, floating in mid-air.

According to Dictionary.com, the word surrealistic is defined as something “characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions.” Even the album cover artistically displays a surrealistic landscape with it’s psychedelic colors and alien-like figures, enjoying their lunch. Much to my expectations from the cover and CD title, the musical melodys of Surrealistic Picnic were truly other-worldly.

According to FDH Records, Lunch With Beardo was formed in 2003 in upstate New York, from the remains of a few punk rock bands: The Sex Machines, Deprivation and Murdershift. Band members include Timh Gabriele, Eric The III, Jesse Heffler, Jeff Bumiller and Jon Wazoo. Together they brought their punk, hardcore and jazz roots to create a new experimental band. All members claim they are from the Planet Lunch. The band has a very unique, out-of-this-world sound, quite literally.

Their use of guitars, bass, trumpets, tambourines, primitive drumming, walkie talkies, turntables, noises and someone speaking backwards in slow motion, among many other devices, create the atmosphere of a space invasion when you listen to it. They create the feeling that your room is being invaded by an alien space ship trying to keep itself from falling apart, with the aliens speaking to themselves about what they are going to do with you in the background. All in all, a very creepy sound.

Everything you could imagine hearing in your worst nightmare or best dream of being abducted by aliens, can be heard on one of the three tracks on this CD. The tracks, ranging from six to 26 minutes in length, combine experimental improvisation as well as computer generated sounds and create a racket of a musical selection.

Since performances are improvised, every time Lunch With Beardo performs, it is a new experience for the audience and band members itself. Lunch With Beardo has performed in night clubs, art galleries, biker bars, basements and on college campuses.

It is not easy to determine what genre of music Lunch With Beardo is. It’s somewhere between space-age ambiance and new age. This isn’t the kind of music you would put on your iPod when your friends come over for a party, it’s more along the lines of music you would put on when you need inspiration for your next art project. Lunch With Beardo may not be your flavor of music, but it does make you appreciate and wonder how they made those sounds.

Critics from FDH Records said “‘Surrealistic Picnic’ is the ultimate, awesome amalgamation of the band’s past sonic experiments, as well as a concise summary of their vision for the future of what they term ‘Spaceadelic’ music.”

Of all the words you could use to describe Lunch With Beardo like, visionary, exotic, new-age and psychotic, “spaceadelic” fits it perfectly.

For more information about Lunch With Beardo check out their Web site at http://fdhmusic.com/lunchwithbeardo/lunchwithbear do.html.

E-mail Alison at steve263@newpaltz.edu"- The New Paltz Oracle

"Now this is what Brother George used to call "cosmic slop" -- noisy, mystical, wonked-out psychedelic blowouts done old-school, lo-fi style by a bunch of players in various NY hardcore and punk bands, not that you would ever guess as much from the sonic evidence of this disc. As its title suggests, this is throwback to the late 60s / early 70s psychedelic rock epitomized by the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Gong, and lesser- known (but much freakier) bands and artists like D. H. Hooker. There's a lot of things going on in the mix, and it's all been heavily processed and drenched in reverb, and just like the best old- school psych records (and Funkadelic albums, too), things start out strange and get weirder as time progresses. Using instruments as traditional as guitar, bass, and trumpets, plus an assortment of varied noisemakers including a See 'n Say, walkie talkies, theremin, turntables, tape loops, samples, and other stuff, they create here three droning, floating cups of cosmic soup, each one employing much the same ingredients but seasoned differently. This is space rock in the ultimate sense of the word, implying not only cosmic tones and journeys, but pathways leading to inner space as well. A lot of it sounds like a really whacked-out beatnik soundtrack to a forgotten low-budget science fiction flick, which sounds plenty fine to me. They may be punk and hardcore players, but they have a surprisingly firm grasp on mellow, spaced-out psych rock."- One True Dead Angel #10

" The first 'official' release of upstate New York's diehard food-obsessed sonic spelunkers. Long, trippy, improvised and psychedelic noise-rock jams. Crunchy, with a gooey center...like your skull."- Opposite Records

"This CD comes closest to what one may call “music” (as opposed to “noise”) of all the stuff reviewed up here in the last couple of months - Nevertheless the bio included with the CD mentions Lunch with Beardo [website] acting as support-band for such fine acts like Crank Sturgeon (use the search of this blog to see what pops up of this one), Wolf Eyes (idem), Guilty Connector, Kites (idem), Prurient (idem), Borbetomagus (idem),… to quote just a few of the listed names. The music on Surrealistic picnic can be described as psychadelic improvnoise-rock: it sports a thick layer of sounds and noises in which the delaypedal isn't spared, and over this mayhem of frequencies (and contrasting with it) hovers a slow, introspective riff coming from a lonesome guitar (according to the bio this riff “sets an eerie tone redolant of invading spacecraft slowly casting shadows accross the bucoloc landscape like some 1950s films”). Think improv, freestyle, psychedelica, and maybe also a bit early seventies-style - The band itself calls its mix of noise, rock and psychadelica “spaceadelic” - it all sounds clean and clear and the CD is cleary mixed to be played loud. The CD's artwork looks a bit like one of the photographs of Henri Cartier Bresson (showing some people having a picnic near a stream) refurbished by David Crumb. The artwork of some Ozric Tentacles-releases also comes in mind. The 5 fixed members (and 3 guest-musicians) of Lunch with Beardo use a good deal of instruments: turntables, walkie talkies, samples, percusion, trumpet, tapes, bass, guitar, found-instruments, vocals and most of the time it sounds as if all the instruments are used at the same time (though some are mixed more upfront than the others) - The first 2 songs, respectively 13 and 6 minutes in length are more slow- to mid-tempo sporting that mix of noise and melancholy, the third one - 26 minutes in length - starts much the same way, before bursting into a 20-minute lasting freenoise-exploration, to say it the bands' way: “we have liftoff”. Listened to the CD a couple of times now, it's not entirely my type of music (too much psychedelica for a down to earth person like me), but the pictures in the insert do look quite promising, with the band dressed up in what I would describe as fckn bstrds “light version” suits - According to their bio Lunch with Beardo, founded in 2003, has so-far only released (read: “given away”) CDr's and tapes of live-recordings, this being their first real album, recorded in a more studio-like environment. Live this band is probably a blast. Get the CD either trough the band [website], or through FDH [website], the label releasing this one."- Noiseblog

""Do you experiment with DMT or acid? Perhaps you go for the more natural highs of weed and ’ shrooms. Or maybe you just like some masochism mixed into your meditation routine. Whatever your psychedelic Kool-Aid of choice, Lunch with Beardo might be a worthy side dish. In case you haven’t fed your head in a while, buy the album and you will find yourself out the door to the local herb man tout de suite. If not to enjoy the music then to just get the hell away from it. Be emotionally prepared, or just schedule your therapy appointment now. This is noise from five hard-working and creative boys who cut their teeth on punk, hardcore, and prog-metal. Slow that down to 1/10th the RPMs, add a meandering trumpet, nonsensical groaning, tape loops, some minor arpeggios, a Theremin, and other miscellaneous trickery, and you have Lunch with Beardo. This art is anarchy in motion. Don’t question it. You will miss the point. Lunch with Beardo is a much-needed shot in the arm for the fearfully homogeneous Hudson Valley music scene. Give us experimental noise collage any day over one more chanteuse with an acoustic guitar. Much of the band hails from New Paltz and surrounds such as Warwick and La Grange. Lunch with Beardo plays The Cubbyhole in Poughkeepsie on February 25. www.lunchwithbeardo.com""- Chronogram

" OK, get this...Apparently there is a planet called Lunch. This planet is communicating with us through these ambient/ experimental recordings. I can see actual pictures of the aliens on the inside cover. They look a bit like humans wearing monster masks and carrying instruments (sorry if that offends the Lunch people. Didn't mean to insult and harm diplomatic relations.) The sound is odd. They use the word "Space-A-Deliclic." Thats not a bad description. The "muisc" is improvised. The sound is very dissonant and chaotic. It also has a slow, sort of meandering pace that creeps through the blood vessles of the brain like a slowly spreading chill. There is a jazzy feel to it, though this has a lot more going on around it noise wise than your typical freeform. The use of real guitar, played in a fairly conventional way keeps the whole thing somewhat grounded. It allows the band to comunicate its weirdness through an ear friendly medium. They do a good job at portraying their chosen theme - strange otherworldly casual consumption. I hope I get your dinner invite to the planet lunch pretty soon, because this has to be a sight to see live. Apparently they pull it off like some sort of atmospheric blissed out gwar show in a dream. That, my friends...I've got to see."- Neo-Zine

"
KFJC style psychedelia/ambient-noise rock from New York. Super stoned with lots of weird noise. Layers upon layers of guitar loops, feedback, and samples. Think Acid Mothers Temple. It is difficult to get through the longer pieces, but strangely satisfying by the end. FCC clean. Picks 1,3.

**1-(13:25) Starts fairly easy but more difficult noises enter. Hollers, and ride cymbals. Gets progressively more cacophanous and loud. Ends with creepy clip of man talking about... beards?
2-(6:04) echoey low guitars and bass. The sound of wind blowing through a trumpet. Harsh high pitched guitar enter midway. Weird drunken brass coming through the buzzing noise. Noisier than 1.
*3-(26:31) Starts slow with spaced but prominent bass tones and some slow synth washes/rustles. Horns appear. Chant like synth. Altered spoken-vox samples. Guitar picks up tempo and starts to pick more. -18:00 quiets down. Beats, noises enter and leave quickly, with one gong in the background. Space noises. At -15:37 bam! Distorted indonesian music on fast foward times 100 mutates into buzz, noise, and backwards looped sax? -7:00 slowly starts to fall apart until the end. Lots of interesting noises come and go. Ends with low-end rumbles, chant like noises and aspace age windsweep. "- KZSU Zookeeper (Stanford University)

"From the ashes of various punk bands, such as The Sex Machines, Deprivation, Murdershift came in 2003 a new band: Lunch With Beardo. No more punk, but free form experimental improvisation music. The band consists of Jeff Bumiller, Jesse Heffler, Eric 'The Ill', Jon Wazoo and Timh Gabriele and they play the whole rock kit, but also synthesizers, saxophones and perhaps other sound generators. It seems to me that this is culled from a variety of recordings, and then pasted together again in a collage fashion. Not of the abrupt kind, but gentle gliding into each other. Especially in the first two tracks this works well: a spacious built up, free form psychedelic music running amok, all quite uncontrolled and yet quite controlled at the same time. The third track, by far the longest of the three, things erupt into the world of noise and here sometimes things collapse under their own weight. The tension that is present in the first two tracks is gone, certainly after the eight minute (which I thought would have been a suitable ending of things). For those who love their rock music to be free form, psychedelic and also a bit noisy - and by my account there should be a few - keep an eye open for Lunch With Beardo."- Vital Weekly

"Let me start this off with saying I am sober, and I was never very introduced to Jefferson airplane. Second of all, I would be freaking out right now if I was on schrooms. This album is real fucked up. It's a combination of a variety of instruments and heavy producing that makes this not music, but noice. This is an example of a piece of music that expands music from something with rhythm to something you can just listen to. Like a movie soundtrack, or classical music, this cd is an experiment of what you can do with recording rather than something previously defined as music.
The Trumpet, like how i play, is more played with emotion than talent. It's simply the person blowing into it and hitting notes rather than Structly defining the output by a chord or a note. I'm a little more than a third through the album and I've yet heard anything previously defined as music, except a few bass notes that were just introduced. I mean were they on drugs or is this just a style of music? What I've heard of Jefferson Airplane is psychodelic rock and roll; and that music which is music is fucked up but it isn't a tightly lit canister of emotional fuck'd upacy. This album makes no sense, It's like if you went on their fictional planet and recorded just every day happens. It's all very natural.

The problem I think with this cd is, maybe I'm just not on drugs, is that it's not beauty to my ears. It's simply a very fucked up cd. I just don't Feel what they are trying to do, I guess. It's sort of like an ocean wave, but I'm on the shore. I think to step foot I would need some sort of drug. Or maybe be a person who graps what this is. It feels like it's just taking me back and forht into the middle of an ocean.. but what kind of music actually does that? You put on a cd from the greatful deadd, and hear "truckin" and it's a standard song, but when they start jamming out the music actually sort of binds together and makes this Orea of psychedelicness that changes you and pushes you simply from the way it is. This is a cd that, instead of being songs, is a movement of sound. It's a story, No, it's a WORLD in noise form.

This band played with Wolf Eyes, another noise-based band who is fucked up beyond comprehension. There's nothing about this band that warrents music, except the bassline; but there's nothing about this music that isn't trippy. Wolf eyes had some heavy vocals in their cd "Human animal" and this has heavy moaning. I don't know what to think of it. Honestly I don't recommend it. Honestly I think it's the most fucked up cd that exists. I like it though, maybe I should take some acid the next time I listen to it. Perhaps a spaceship to the sun would be a good location to play it too."- The HvScene.com

" Yeah, I have heard this before..... Music from another planet? This project seems to think so. Reportedly from planet Lunch, this CD is a "buffet of sounds with deeply spaced out, apocalyptically unsettling noises". This is the music that artists from planet lunch are all about...

What does this mean? Well, this collection of artists from upstate New York (I don't recall seeing any exits on NY interstates that take you to planet lunch) bring to the table a collection of noise and at times actual music notes in no sequence or form throughout 3 tracks, the last one a whopping 26 minutes plus!

Musically speaking, there is nothing that this project adds to the table as you just cannot categorize them into anything. This is not dark ambient, not rock, not new age or even contemporary music. This is simply noises put together with a little bit of musical ideas with an improbably reference to the psychedelic artists Jefferson Starship from the late 60s.

What I can distinguish musically is a remembrance to the real psychedelic masters Gong at the beginning of the first track, as well as some reference to the French group Heldon at around 20 minutes of the third track with the guitar sound as the base for the rest of the noises that accompany the track. The end of the third song is probably the most musical part of the whole CD, with some lazy guitars closing the track and disappearing in the wake of the noise left behind.

This music is either going to captivate you or just plain annoy you. If you’re receptive brain cells happen to be in tune with something very abstract, at times soothing and for the most part dissonant and chaotic, then this is the ticket for you. This music will make you feel special, it will make you part of a breed apart. On the other hand, if you are looking for more common sense musical ideas, a barely resemblance to the term "song" this is definitely not for you. Not only it will bore you to death. The CD will plain annoy you and leave you wondering while these artists even bothered recording these tracks and take precious plastic resources away from other human beings.

For good or for bad, they will make an impression on you. As for myself, I liked some parts of all 3 songs, but as a whole there is already too much snake oil in the music industry...
February 1, 2007
By Carlos
6.5 of 10"- Lunar Hypnosis

Recorded and Mixed December ‘05 -February ‘06 by Eric the Ill at Space Station 11
Mastered by Colin Marston at PAINcave Studios in Brooklyn, NY
All music written by Lunch With Beardo

Lunch on this recording was prepared by:

Jeff Bumiller - Guitar, Vocals, Percussion
Timh Gabriele- See 'N Say, Toy Oven, Walkie Talkie, Laptop Noises, Samples, Spray Cans, Yelps, Eating Utensils
Jesse Heffler - Vocals, Trumpet, Pedals, Tape Loops
Eric The Ill - Theremin, Turntables, Vocals, Percussion, Alpert
Jon Wazoo- Guitar, Bass, Vocals

Special Guest Chefs:
Dave Bierling- bass (track 2)
Dan Harrison- Extra Percussive help (track 3)
Tubey (track 3)

Original artwork by Mike Vlad executed at the FDH sweatshop
Photography by Victoria Mahoney

Thanks to everyone that has played with or supported Lunch With Beardo on their spaceadelic journey

All Praise Be To Beardo