Beardyman may instill images of the unkempt dude on your local street corner who spends his days collecting discarded fag butts. However, the Beardyman we recently caught up with is more of a stubbly British lad who has earned enough beatboxing notoriety in recent years to unashamedly scrounge his fags directly from the casual passersby.
He is currently gearing up for one of the messiest train rides going, the Bacardi Express. This will be rather a daunting experience for the UK Beatbox Champion who has exclusively revealed to Music Feeds that he “has had a phobia of trains, ever since I was eaten by one when I was six years old.” He has assured us, however, that the show will go on,and that getting back together with his old pals Groove Armada is likely to result in ridiculous antics, even promising to do his “naked dwarf juggling trick for everyone”.
If you have never seen this guy in action, I suggest you get your ass onto YouTube immediately. What makes him more diverse than your everyday beatboxing crazy is his ability to mix his skills with comedic performance. His alter ego, Professor Bernhard Steinerhoff, has been known to conduct seemingly serious lectures in a German accent before dropping his beats onto a roomful of unsuspecting students.
So what’s provided the inspiration to the bearded one? – none other than Australia’s own Lyrebird. Beardyman explains “It’s the best mimic in the animal world, better than me. I did a documentary about it for BBC radio 4: — it was heavy blud”. Beardyman has also received divine inspiration from the bearded dude upstairs; the idea to use a Kaoss Pad on stage to loop and sample his vocals came to him from God himself, “He told me to do it in a dream”. Unfortunately, God does not account for the likes of the wasted dude in a Brighton biker bar who managed to fuck the equipment up when he jumped up on stage mid-set.
YouTube has been a vital publicity tool for Beardyman and the most popular clip to date, Kitchen Diaries – a Nigella Lawson style guide to cooking with beats, has more than 3 million hits. On the suggestion that this clip was perhaps contrived as a result of being stoned in the kitchen, Beardyman narks up, “How dare you, I tried marijuana once and I didn’t like it. It gave me loads of ideas and a feeling of relaxation. Very dangerous… just look what happened to Bob Dylan. I prefer crack.” It’s about time we saw an artist with good sense.
With his apocalyptic view of the world, it’s no easy feat to get Beardyman to open up about the future. With artists like himself and Rahzel pushing the beatbox art form, I asked how he sees it evolving in the next 20 to 30 years, but apparently it’s irrelevant. “It won’t exist… We will however be privileged to be able to witness what will be the greatest extinction event in the earth’s history.” And as for if we can expect to hear his material laid down on CD, he claims he is currently working on an album, however, it won’t be ready until 2015 when “the world will be ravaged by war and drought”. Now there’s something to look forward to!
So once the Bacardi Express tour wraps up, what can we expect from this bizarrely talented human beat machine?
“Total world domination”
It’s great to have realistic goals.
