Beanfield’s first album shared common ground with the likes of Peace Orchestra and Landslide, hoping to bottle the involved rhythmic patterns of Latin American jazz and the calming, meditative workouts of minimal art techno. The result was neither as comfortably inventive as their influences nor as nervously overdone. Beanfield was basically a very simple album, sticking close to quiet disco conventions as it dropped in bits of liquefied FX and orphaned keyboards. As in the nine-minute “Elektro-Kraut,” however, the album could also be short of enough cunning to fill its own creative vacancies, which promised little in the way of the band’s ultimate longevity. – Dean Carlson
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