Himalayan Bear - ...attacks the brilliant air
Renegade Radio Magazine
By Josh Rioux
Sept. 2007

Listening to ...attacks the brilliant air, the second release by Himalayan Bear, the solo incarnation of Chefs Ryan Beattie, I'm struck by the fact that Himalayan Bear is the perfect name for the entity that would make this music. There is something about the image of a hulking, shaggy, possibly endangered being lumbering through a snowy world of stark wonder that fully evokes the essence of this album: deep, huge and still. The album begins with an acoustic guitar strumming a minor key drone that immediately sounds endless. It's less a song than a mantra, really. Himalayan Bear seeks something both more complex and profoundly simpler than melody and structure, something that approaches the non-rhythms and non-music of nature, and doing it in a way that is wholly unpretentious. This mood is maintained throughout ...attacks the brilliant air, and Beattie does beautiful work with the production, his use of minimal instrumentation, largely acoustic guitar with small touches of drums and some shimmering reverb, allowing small, lovely grace notes to emerge, such as the tender accordion on the gorgeous "Lost Love," and the haunting album closer "Maybe We Could Get it Fixed." Even amidst all this, it might just be Beattie's voice that truly makes this album; he is one of those rare singers who uses his voice like an instrument: his low, Hawaiian-inflected phrasing smoothly dropping now, then rising to a lush break like warm waves. It's a beautiful listen, this album, something I would call haunting if it didn't manage consistently to go beyond simple emotions into what is closer to meditation.