Interview: Beardyman > <

Thu, Jan 21 2010

New Ableton Live Template For Studio

Interview: Beardyman - New Ableton Live Template For Studio

When Rivmixx caught up with Beardyman he'd just come out of a "weird conference", where he had to dress in a suit and pretend to be a very boring professor. It was for the the end of some pharmaceutical company's two day conference. "For some cardio vascular meetings. I had to come in at the end and pretend that I was some professor that they'd been waiting on. It was weird, but good for money," he says, resolutely.

Beardyman has worked his offerings well. Something of a live staple on the festival circuit last year, the beatboxing, live producing whizz is as comfortable at a formal conference as he is at the helm of an underground club night. And the same goes for his fans. Beardyman is hard to bracket, though loosely tied to the generic "hip hop" genre. He's worked with everyone from The Bays to Groove Armada to the Heritage Orchestra and all sorts in between. You could call him "experimental" for want of, yet another, less overused term.

READ MORE ABOUT BEARDYMAN'S HISTORY AND HIS INTERNET SUCCESS HERE

But now he's working on his debut album - something his fans have been calling on for time. "I've just configured an Ableton Live template so that I can do kind of what I do live but in the studio. It'll be produced pretty much live, by me, Tom Middleton and a very good sound engineer.

"The album is gonna be shit hot beats and well produced, screwface stuff."

beardyman, rivmixx

The Milky Bars are on me!

Gigging relentlessly last year - not to mention the years before - has gathered Beardy some serious fan figures. But now, with backing from Rob da Bank and his Sunday Best label, he's ready to put something solid down. "It'll be out just after summer," he says about the upcoming album. "I've got to do like three months of TV and radio stuff before.

"For ten days though, I'm locking myself away in the studio, doing arrangements on the fly. So what you hear on record will all have been live." But, this time, people can keep the sounds.

"What I've discovered doing beatboxing and looping is the process of getting ideas from your head in a conscious deliberation, an energy of creativity. What's happened when you watch an unfunny comedy on BBC1 is that people have thought too hard about it. If you're really feeling something, other people will. If it makes you make a screwface then you know you're on it. That's what I wanna get down still.

"Performing live I've got no time to reconsider. It's like, 'ok, it's done now, work with it'. Working with this Ableton Live template is a move, slightly, away. But I'm dissatisfied with being a one man cover band."

Beardyman live at Battlejam, Cargo London.

The Freestyle Project is another of Beardyman's new projects for 2010. They had their first "meeting" last night (January 20), with Stig, Dr Syntax, Pavan from the Foreign Beggars , Klumzy Tung , Rowan Disraeli and MC Lean all involved. "The idea is to make it more than a jam - to make songs. There's no gig, just a little crowd, but we might do something to win tickets - to see people recording. By March/April we'll have an album though, hopefully. It's just a ridiculously huge amount of talent that's involved so. It's gonna be a beautiful labour of love. Freestyle, improv - that's what good tunes are all about."

He's also been working with Reggie Watts , an "improvisational surrealist beatbox comedian," according to Beardy. "It's amazing stuff; it's pretty special." And then, of course, comes Battlejam - the night he's been running for several years with JFB - an experimental high-energy freestyle jam, where the audience choose the sounds, themes and tempo, whilst the acts have fun around them. It's interactive, engaging and really freakin' good. But, as Rivmixx notes, it seemed to take a back seat to Beardy's continuous touring last year.

"Running a club night is not easy. I get a lot of bookings and I just can't put every Friday out to do Battlejam. It is quarterly thing really, in Audio, Brighton and Cargo, London. It's always been quite underground though."

That's something it really needn't be - underground. The night is always rammed, the acts involved love it, and there's nothing else out there that's like it. He's got his mate, Johnny, working on it now. Beardy's tour next year "has to have some level of exclusivity" though. "We are talking of making it [Battlejam] a secret gig too, coz it's really an exciting experimental night and for me, personally, I'm trying to move into the more experimental stuff. Like when I'm working live, with Watts. It's just a stream of consciousness and we move from genre to genre."

Whatever Beardyman does you just know it's gonna be good. And that album, and The Freestyle Project, not to mention his work with Watts is gonna be HUGE. Get yourself down to Battlejam and see for yourself.

Rivmixx is giving away two pairs of tickets for Battlejam next Friday (January 29) at Audio, Brighton. Just email feedback@rvimixx.com with "Beardyman" in the subject box. We'll announce the winners next Wednesday (January 27).