Having been living under a rock for the last 10 years, I wasn’t really down with Beardyman’s work, but was asked to go along to Exeter Phoenix to check him out and since I’m local to the venue, I figured why not. I had admittedly heard of his beatboxing endeavours, which saw him win the UK Beatbox Championships twice in a row back in 2006-2007. Since then, Beardyman has released a number of singles and two albums, whilst simultaneously carving out a niche for himself on the live circuit with his genre-defying performances. Beardyman is listed on his Wikipedia page as a beatboxer, musician and comedian which goes some way to explaining what you can come to expect from one of his shows.
Before the Phoenix got to experience the main event, we were treated to some turntable wizardry, courtesy of Brighton’s JFB, winner of the 2021 DMC World Championship. Making the most complex scratching and beat juggling routines look almost too easy, I waited for him to make at least one mistake - he didn’t! I’m a big fan of turntablism and fully appreciate the years that go into learning the craft at that level, in addition to the months and months that go into making just one routine. Would I want to listen to it for an hour? To be honest, I wouldn’t - you can’t dance to a record when a section of it is being juggled back and forth for three minutes and after a while, it becomes less about playing to the crowd and more about showboating.
To be fair to JFB, his routine was more listenable than most and whilst he was juggling sections of popular hip hop tracks including Us 3’s ‘Cantaloop’ or more contemporary tracks like Daft Punk’s ‘Robot Rock’, he did it in a way that made sense musically and didn’t spoil the original track. His set was also well-structured, so it built up through genres and into a clubby BPM range come the end.
What’s also worthy of a mention is that none of this was on vinyl - he was using Rane turntables with a laptop which allows DJs to exploit the technology to push the envelope further than before as you can trigger samples and tracks quicker without having to cue up vinyl. Scratch DJs have been using digital vinyl setups for over 10 years now and the technology will continue to drive the medium forwards, it's just the way it is before anyone starts the whole “it was harder in my day” routine.
It was now time for Beardyman to do his thing and what better way to makes an entrance than by way of a synth-produced ‘fart battle’ with his warmup act? Thus setting the stage for the rest of the show, which was similarly unpredictable with a splash of random. Using a mind-boggling array of homemade apps across multiple touchscreens that replicated a kind of modular synth set up, Beardyman made music on the fly with live loops of anything from the sound of his voice, claps to samples of the audience. Accompanying this with the use of keyboards and drum loops/breakbeats, along with trippy visuals on a large screen, the overall end product was spontaneous and energetic and a feast for the senses.
If there’s a common theme in Beardyman’s live act, then it’d be techno, drum & bass, dubstep, more techno, beatboxing, some scat vocals, jokes and yet more techno. Employing technology to push the envelope is very much what Beardyman is about, in addition to free-flowing improvisation with the use of analogue synth noises, vocal loops, techno beats and the odd breakbeat. If you came looking for recognisable songs, verses, choruses and chords, then you were definitely at the wrong gig. This was also not the sort of performance you sit down to - you needed to dance or you might as well go home.
I’ve not experienced a live act quite like Beardyman and while I’m not sure I’m his core demographic, it’s also easy to see why he’s considered such a favourite with today’s generation of festival goers, looking for something different to the established norm.
Words - Joe Taylor
Pictures - Steve Muscutt