Music > Interviews

Beardyman

26/11/14

Beardyman is a force of nature. Starting off as a beatboxer, but quickly using his music technology skills to loop and play with sounds not only from his mouth but his own invention, the Beardytron 5000 MKII, he draws incredulous crowds wherever he plays. His album Distractions has just come out and he’s playing at the Waterfront this coming Sunday.

How has 2014 been for you? Any highlights?

My wife pushed my son out of her womb through her vagina; that's been the defining aspect of this year for me so far. Also though, I pushed my album out of my brain through the Beardytron, a painstakingly bespoke designed, built and tested live-music production system, made from scratch pretty much by some of the smartest people in the world. 

Can you tell us how you started making noises with your mouth?

I was a weird kid. I was always copying the noises of things I heard, doing early-stage proto beatbox to pass the time from the age of about three I guess. 

How did your love of music begin?

Sitting in front of my parents’ record player listening to Lionel Richie's ‘Hello’. Apparently the intro to that track, with all its sparkly bits, would send me off into a thousand yard stare. 

I know you got the name Beardyman as you literally were a man with a beard. If you were able to rename yourself now, what would you call yourself?

Steve Buschemi

Can you tell me a little about the Beardytron 5000 MKII? How does it work and what can you do with it?

The Beardytron is a completely bespoke built mobile music-production workstation of my own design. It started off as an extension of my ability to beatbox and improvise music with looping, but it's since become an all encompassing music-production studio with features not found anywhere else. A team of about six of the world’s best music coders coded it in C++ (one of the lowest level, and hence most processor-efficient, programming languages) from scratch. 

Humour’s a vital part of your work. What makes you laugh?

Rick and Morty is amazing…basically anything on Adult Swim. The Eric Andre show, for example, is the best thing ever. 

Your new album came out earlier this month. What’s is like?

t's dope. Stream it on Spotify or buy it on iTunes or steal it from a friend. It's all music, no jokes, which is good if you like music and think jokes in albums are a bit like stopping to tell a knock knock joke during sex or something. There are moments of levity on this latest album, but no joke tracks or skits like on the last one. 

How did the momentous Jack Black get involved with your project One Album per Hour?

Jack Black is awesome; I'm sure he'd like being called momentous. He's quite a moment in time. He's a very powerful creative force; it was intimidating and weird, knowing that I had this one hour to make a killer album with one of my all time comedy heroes, but my god, what an honour and so much fun. We made some good tunes out of it too. I made him laugh quite a lot too; you could see him not being able to keep a straight face. 

What kind of music do you like to listen to in your down time?

Anything and everything, new, old, any and every genre. I listen to extreme shit, non-extreme shit and everything in between. I see music as a huge tasting platter.

What other beatboxers/musical innovators  that are around at the moment would you recommend we check out?

Dub FX is really good, as is Reeps One; check them out. 

What do you hope to achieve in 2015?

Rock martyrdom; I'm gonna get the Bestival crowd to all hold sharp objects up and I’m gonna crowd surf myself to ribbons. Gibbons. Hidden mittens. Secret kittens. 

Beardyman plays the Waterfront on Sunday 30th November. Tickets from www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk