Jazz
Edition Records · 25 September 2026
“P.LAY” runs 5:31 and it’s the track where BEAT MUSIC 2.0 really holds. Mark Guiliana’s drumming pushes without letting up and Tim Lefebvre’s electric bass answers in thick swells and pedals, while Stu Brooks adds exactly as much electronics as the track needs and no more. It’s the second of eight, and it sets a bar the album doesn’t always come back to.
The eight titles are the same joke over and over: B.ANG, P.LAY, B.EAT, D.RUM, B.ORN, W.EST, M.OVE and J.OHN. The starting point is early gaming culture and the electronic music of those years, and Guiliana plays drums, percussion, electronics, keys and guitar, and sings on top of that. Nicholas Semrad handles the keyboards.
“M.OVE” (6:18) is the longest and the best: danceable techno patterns, tides of cross-rhythm and abrupt shifts you don’t see coming. “B.EAT” (4:28) starts in a dub atmosphere and ends up on the dancefloor, with Brooks on electric bass instead of the electronics he played on the track before.
It’s been seven years since the previous record under this banner, Beat Music! Beat Music! Beat Music! (Motéma, 2019), which picked up a Grammy nomination, and Guiliana’s Beat Music goes back to 2013. It is the first record of the project to come out on Edition, where Guiliana already has four albums of his own. Gretchen Parlato sings on “D.RUM” and “B.ORN”, and Marley Guiliana joins her on the second.
Close to half the album falls short. “B.ANG” opens on cracked synth ostinatos and an electro-rock charge that owes a lot to Gary Numan, and it’s a weak way in; “B.ORN” (5:16) and “W.EST” (5:19) sit back to back in the middle and make the flattest stretch of the lot. The pattern repeats: when the retro layer thins out and Guiliana actually experiments, the record lifts; when the retro layer is in charge, it’s an exercise in style.
Eight tracks, forty minutes, Edition Records, 25 September.
Rating: 7.0/10
Text by Aina Torrents