BILLY FULLER - Fragments

Billy Fuller is the bassist who built the Beak> sound from behind the scenes. For years his four strings have been the engine of that minimalist, hypnotic machine, the carpet on which Geoff Barrow and co. laid down their electronic obsessions. With “Fragments”, the musician steps into the spotlight, not with a carefully honed, polished album, but with a collection of shards made up of sonic notes accumulated over the years and recorded alone in his home studio while collaborating with artists of the calibre of Robert Plant, Baxter Dury and Massive Attack.
Sixteen tracks in thirty-six minutes. Ideas that last less than a minute and others that stretch out to nearly five. Fuller plays everything: bass, drums, guitars, synths, keyboards. The voice appears only in a few spoken word passages, like a distant echo creeping in among the instruments. There's no narrative thread, but there is a cohesion of atmosphere, a kind of soundtrack for a science-fiction documentary.

The opener “Rummer” is a statement of intent: a bass pulsing over a motorik beat, synths swaying like signals from a distant galaxy. It sounds like the theme tune for a TV show from a parallel reality, and already here Fuller shows his talent for building miniature worlds. “Three Blind Mice” heads in the same direction, but with a darker mood, almost like an evening political talk show. Andy Sutor's drums add a weight the other tracks lack, and for a moment it feels like listening to an old Beak> track.
“Penny Bont” is the track that comes closest to solo Thom Yorke: restless synths, a voice murmuring nonsensical words, an atmosphere that dissolves before becoming anything definite. “Whammy”, on the other hand, is pure noise, the sound of a bassist losing himself in the void, exploring distortion like an astronaut drifting away from the ship. It's the toughest moment, almost unlistenable for lovers of harmony. “Tailgates & Ratchet Straps” is perhaps the track that best represents Fuller. A spoken monologue, a live act of self-sabotage: "Nobody cares about your band or your bass/ Nobody wants an old face that's out of place". It's the voice of a musician who has spent years backing others, now finding himself staring into the mirror. The video is fantastic, and the song hits like a punch to the gut.

The record's limitation lies in its very nature: being episodic. Some tracks (“Something Else” and “I Can't”) are barely sketched out, as if Fuller had wanted to include everything without doing the necessary polishing work. But that's also the charm of “Fragments”, its fragmentary nature, precisely. Fuller is simply playing with his instruments, recording whatever crosses his mind amid atmospheric, somewhat thick sonorities, through which you can sense life in a melancholic, easygoing Bristol. A work that's certainly not for everyone, but if you tune into its frequency, you'll happily lose yourself within it.

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20/07/2026