Beardyman

He cites his main inspirations as Tim Exile, Rahzel and Eddie Murphy. This one-man beatboxing act is halfway between musician and stand-up comedian and has effortlessly held the attention of crowds of up to 20, 000 on the main stage at Bestival and at Fatboy Slim's Big Beach Boutique 4 last year.

Beardyman, aka Darren Foreman, was already into d&b by the time he moved to Brighton in 2001 to study at the cty's university. In his first term at uni he went to see Rahzel play live and was so enthralled by the performance that he started beatboxing. He snagged his first live gig in 2002, in Brighton, and quickly gained a cult following locally. In 2006 he became the UK's beatbox champion, won the title again in 2007, and has now peformed alongside a string artists such as Groove Armada, Andy C, Jazzy Jeff and Grooverider. Footage of his live performances on youtube.com get up to three million hits a pop and since appearing on 'Lily Allen and Friends' on TV last year, his fame is slowly seeping into mainstream consciousness. Prime time then to release a debut album. "I'm working on some ridiculous material," says Beardyman. "It's really upbeat, downbeat, sideways, mental. I'm excited".

If you can't wait for his next gig, then check out his hilarious 'Kitchen Diaries' video on youtube.com for a taster. He's also working on a brand new live show, he claims is "a bit like Jamie Lidell's - but much better". Strong words but that's what Beardyman is all about and that's why people love him. "Fatboy Slim and David Guetta have, on separate occasions, bowed to me on stage as I was playing." he laughs, "And apparently Carl Cox and Nigella Lawson are also fans. Seriously." - DJ magazine

Two years ago, Beardyman posted a video on YouTube of himself doing a spoof cookery show using beats as his ingredients. Entitled 'The Kitchen Diaries', it got 3.5m hits and quickly entered the realms of YouTube legend. "I had people coming up to me all over the place going 'You're that guy beatboxing in the kitchen' It made me realise how powerful YouTube is."

But Beardyman is far more than a one-off novelty act. He has been beatboxing as long as he can remember. "I did it at nursery but kept it to myself so people didn't look at me like as I was weird." A turning point came when he was at university in Brighton, where he discovered that technology could help him create the sounds he was searching for. "Every advance in computing has a direct impact on my performance," he says. He is also the archetypal showman; equally at home at a drum n bass rave or click corporation gig. Often, he will start a show with no idea what he is going to do, and build up a rapport with his audience before deciding.

It's an ethos he's bringing to London's Southbank Centre next month for two shows called Complete and Udder Shambles in which he and some of his friends are planning to freestyle in front of an audience.

Also, in July, Beardyman will make the crossover to primetime TV, providing the music for the 'Name That Tune' round of BBC1's new celebrity quiz show As Seen On TV. And next year he'll finally get around to releasing his first album. "It's going to surprise people how experimental it is," he says. "You've got to keep innovating or what's the point?" - Independent Newspaper

Beardyman – Beatbox Superstar

The Korg-powered beatboxing icon talks about his ever more inventive, increasingly successful career

Today, the artist known to the world as Beardyman is merely a slightly stubbly fella, one who’s still weary from the last night’s gig at London’s South Bank Centre.
“Yeah, it went well,” he mumbles, before rubbing his chin and reflecting, “Sometimes I can’t believe that I’m able to do what I’m doing, just getting up there and being stupid.”
His current show, Beardyman’s Complete And Utter Shambles, is his most ambitious yet, a kind of improv-driven comedy-music extravaganza.
“The audience will ask a question and that sets you off on a particular tangent,” he explains. “Essentially, it’s talking b****cks with the audience. I love the fact that you’re flying by the seat of your pants. The best thing is that each show is different, cos you can control the chaos but the chaos is kind of the show. Although sometimes you controlling the chaos is the show, also.”

Beardyman’s Triple-Threat

For the uninitiated it’s hard to neatly sum up what exactly Beardyman does. More than just a musician or an MC, he loiters in the rarely traversed hinterland where hip hop, performance art and comedy meet. Essentially, he uses his voice, a mic and a whole raft of looping technology to amuse, amaze and provoke. If you’ve ever seen him live, you’d be unlikely to forget him. If you haven’t, check out his hilarious Nigella Lawson-goes-beatboxing Kitchen Diaries on YouTube – some three million already have.
Originally, Beardyman was merely a young hip hop head named Darren Foreman.
“I got into doing what I’m doing cos I saw guys like MC Xander, who was doing beatboxing while he was doing looping.”
Another inspiration was Rahzel.
“He was the first person to do beatboxing and singing at the same time and do it really well. It was amazing that one man and his gob could keep a crowd rocking for an hour.”

Going Beyond Beatboxing

Darren won the UK Beatbox Championship in both 2006 and 2007 but, by the time of his second victory, was already moving beyond the strictures of the competition, with its ‘no technological assistance’ rule.
“It’s a weird, purist thing, that idea that you’re somehow cheating if you use technology to enhance what you do. That’s what they said to Bob Dylan, isn’t it?”
At first, he used a Line 6 DL4 modeller.
“It’s not got a very long delay time, though,” he recalls, explaining, “I’d get a short loop and record it, plus whatever I was doing on top, into a longer loop. There was another one I used called a Looperlative, I’ve still got one in my basement. But even though it was a really good unit, it was a bit bug-y.”
“This is what happens with a lot of looping equipment,” he opines. “The market is smaller than the people who make them and the company ends up going under.”

Out Of KAOSS…

Bearing these experiences in mind, Darren was lucky to alight upon Korg’s KAOSS Pad KP3, four of which form the backbone of his current set up.
“I have one KAOSS Pad going into a Boss RC50,” he explains, “I’ve got a mic that goes into a mixer that then goes into a digital mixer, through some compression, which then comes out of the mixer into a KAOSS Pad. That then goes back into the mixer, which then goes into the RC50, which then goes into two other KAOSS Pads. The output of the first KAOSS Pad bypasses the RC50 and goes into the second KAOSS Pad.”
“It’s not the easiest way to make music,” he concedes, “but it’s a pretty good looping system. All four of the KAOSS Pads clock pretty well to the MIDI that’s sent out by the RC50. I’m still learning how to use it and all the tricks that I can do with it.”

Enter The KAOSSILATOR

As you might expect, Darren is something of a gearhead.
“I tend to check out any new stuff that comes onto the market,” he concedes. “I’ve bought way more than I should. I think I keep some technology companies afloat.” One of the synths he keeps meaning to explore further is the Korg KAOSSILATOR. “That’s really intuitive to use. There’s no knobs or anything – literally one finger and you can change so many parameters at a time. It’s incredible, although I haven’t really used it to its full potential yet.”
Armed with all this technology – and a quirky sense of humour – you wonder where Darren might next take his act. His YouTube success suggests that, should he desire it, TV fame could be there for the taking, but Darren also talks about getting into his studio and making some “sick” tunes.
“I do have some pretty groundbreaking ideas,” he reveals. “But I’m not going to say what they are, cos people have already started to nick what I’m doing. I can name beatboxers who, after seeing me, went and bought a KAOSS Pad. So it’s something that I’m going to try to keep under wraps.”
“But,” he adds conspiratorially, “whatever it is, the KAOSS Pads and Korg gear will be absolutely central to it.”



***************************************

Meet The microSAMPLER

Beardyman checks out Korg’s latest groundbreaking piece of gear, and gets more than a few ideas…

Beardyman gazes at the Korg microSAMPLER and you can already see the creative cogs whirring inside his head.
“It looks cool,” he smiles. “I suppose the best thing about it is how quickly you can sample in audio and play it back. I like the fact that it’s battery powered, too – that’s good. I might actually use this in this ’Shambles thing that I’m doing. It could be good for studio stuff as well.”
“Some of the ideas that I’ve had for ways to make music have been very lengthy in process,” he explains. “If I’m doing the beatbox stuff, sometimes it builds up into a whole multi-sampled, layered thing and it sounds really good, I’m glad of the weeks it took making it.... but the microSAMPLER could be good for much quicker, more intuitive stuff. For me, it’s the best way of making music. Some of the best tunes have been written in half an hour. Every producer says that the things that have been most successful for them were the ones where they thought nothing of it, when the brain was working intuitively.”


- Korg.co.uk

# 4 BEARDYMAN
The Beatboxer is dead.
Long live the beatboxer...

"Doesn't everyone find the whole'doing everything with your
mouth'a bit cheesy and old hat?"asks Beardyman.

Real name Darren Foreman, he's
beatboxer by trade, but with
an ever-developing live show
he's taken his art to such a mind
boggling new level, it's difficult to find words for what he does. straddling three Korg Kaos Pads, a synth and an RC50 looping pedal, every noise you hear - bar the synth, does indeed come from Darren's mouth. But it's what he does with these noises that sets him apart from his contemporaries such as Killa Kela, Petebox, Shlomo and Xander.
'It's not impossible to do synth
noises with your mouthi' he's keen to point out. "l could do it if I really wanted to, in razor sharp details, but
I'm thinking, it's been done before so why not do something different? most noises today are just source waves that have been modulated into abstraction - it could be any noises, but they've been modulated to shit. I don't want to make everything with my mouth. l want to make music live, just doing what I want to do in the studio on the stage. What l'm using to make these
noises is kinda by the by. I did used to get really worried about what people thought, but now I don't. l'm on the same line-ups as these massive DJs so I need to sonically match with them. So if that means bringing in a keyboard to achieve that goal then that's what l'll do!"

The end result is a show so
startling it takes the traditional image of a lonesome beatboxer,cupping his mic like his balls, and savagely kick it to the curb. Ranging from house to D&B with departures into hip-hop and filth-fuelled squat party techno, Beardyman lashes out licks so large, they sound like they've been produced in a multi-million dollar studio. And he's been doing so for several years now. Bizarrely, people are only just twigging onto what he actually does onstage!

"It's weird - a lot of people haven't heard of looping"' he laughs. "For a while I was scared about using other instruments, as though I thought the whole idea of me using just my mouth was the real selling factor of my show".

Au contraire. As Darren's realised all too well himself, it's his distinct participation with the crowd as well as his machines that's landed him such critical acclaim (hell, you don't get called the fourth most essential artist to see live this summer in iDJ for no reason!) He's even attracted the attention of the super-respected improvisation act The Bays for a series of gigs this summer.

"I'm so looking forward to the gigs with The Bays" he grins. "I played a gig with Andy Gangadeen. He's arguably the best drummer around right now. I'm fucking chuffed to be playing with them.

"Are we practising? he asks with just a whiff of incredulity. "They never practise so no, I guess not. I don't know how it's going to work. I don't know how technologically it's going to be - they're a live band so I don't know how much kit I'd use. I better talk to them, you've made me worried!" - international DJ

The Rules: How to succeed as a human beatbox
by Beardyman, UK Beatbox Champion

Beardyman, AKA Darren Foreman, is a 27 year old beatboxer who uses cutting edge technology manipulate the sounds that come out of his mouth into whole songs and lie DJ mixes. He has twice held the title of UK Beatbox Champion and now plays regularly to audiences worldwide, including FatBoy Slim's Big Beach Boutique in Brighton 2008 and Glastonbury 2009. He also runs the clubnight Battlejam, where the audience becomes the music. Here Beardyman, whose act is so named because he had a beard at the time of printing the original promotion poster - talks to us about his commitment to beatboxing.

HAVE AMBITIOUS IDEAS
I've managed to transition successfully from the beatbox world to clubs and festivals by seeing bigger name DJs as my competition rather than only other beatboxers.

BE AS ADAPTABLE AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN
Beatboxers get booked for some random stuff. Adaptability gives you an evolutionary advantage. There's no job for life, especially in music as tastes change.

PRACTISE
I get new sounds by making weird noises and seeing if they sound like any real world sounds. Then I refine them.

INNOVATE
Don't be deterred by people telling you to stick to the norm because unless you're doing things that only you can do then you're just trying to fit into an existing role. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door - performance is a jobs market like any other.

BE HUNGRY FOR CRITICISM
Be fascinated by people's opinions, not scared of them. It's important to strive for objectivity.
- The Evening Standard (London)

Beardyman: Pipped to the post by Late of the Pier, I was nonetheless taken aback by Beardyman’s performance, and on any other day probably would have scored higher in the rankings. Thrilling the crowd as any beat boxer does, he managed to intertwine a wide range of party tricks, splicing in Ray Charles, Faithless and La Roux (Skream Let’s Get Ravey remix), with a genuine musical and dancey set. After the intensity of Animal Collective he managed to break their spell and transform the swaying mass into a crowd of dancing bodies. - Drowned in sound

* Lawrence Donegan in San Francisco
* The Guardian, Monday 24 November 2008
* Article history

The video-sharing website YouTube paused momentarily on its march towards global domination this weekend to celebrate those whose lives have been transformed by access to a computer and an unquenchable need to speak to the world.

People like William Sledd, a former shop assistant at Gap who has been catapulted to celebrity by the success of a few homemade videos in which he discusses the social mores and fashion mistakes of modern society. "This stuff is lot easier to do when you are at home on your own," he observed, moving uneasily through the audience of 3,000 as he introduced a fashion segment at YouTube Live. He was as stilted in the flesh as he is uninhibited in the films that are among the site's most watched.

Sledd was one of the YouTube "stars" gathered in San Francisco at the weekend for what the company described as a "celebration of ... the vibrant communities that exist on the site, including bedroom vloggers, budding creatives, underground athletes and world-famous musicians". Katy Perry, whose worldwide hit "I Kissed a Girl" first found an audience on YouTube, was there. So was Beardyman, the Brighton-based human beatbox, and Lucas Cruikshank, the 15-year-old creator of Fred, a hyperactive child whose adventures have made him the website's most popular character.

Joining such luminaries were the great and good of YouTube: Chad Hurley, one of site's originators, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, which bought the company two years ago for more than $1.5bn (£1bn).

At this moment in its arc of internet domination, there are plenty of people who dislike Google, and by extension YouTube, and any such antipathy would have been fuelled on this occasion such as this. It was too corporate and too slick, an Emmys for the Emo generation. What works in the intimate context of a video - the sly campness of Sledd, the energy of Fred, and the over-the-top guitar virtuosity of Funtwo, a Korean guitarist - seemed diminished in the gathering at Herbst Pavilion.

Yet if the cynics were unimpressed, the converted were ecstatic. The agnostics, too, could hardly fail to notice that if YouTube Live was a bloodless affair, it did not diminish what remains a powerful idea. Yet four years after YouTube was founded, it is still short of making money for its owners.

It has, however, led to hundreds of rags-to-riches stories. Sledd was selling jeans in Kentucky before he was catapulted into mainstream US culture.

Juan Mann was another of the website's stars who made the journey to San Francisco for YouTube Live. In 2004, Mann - not his real name - was, by his own account, aimless and friendless when he walked into Sydney's Pitt Street shopping centre carrying a sign which announced he was offering free hugs to all-comers. Two years later a film of his hugging escapades was uploaded onto the internet and quickly became a global phenomenon.

"One week I was washing dishes in Sydney, the next week I was the Oprah Winfrey Show," he said, offering the Guardian a hug. "I have friends, I have a fiancee, I have a purpose. And I have never washed dishes since. Unless they were my own, of course."
- The Guardian