Review: Beardyman, Thekla

Depending on technology as a musician is a tricky business. Things can go wrong, and you’re at the risk of becoming something of a gimmick. Oh, cool, you can make beepy noises into some sort of danceable rhythm? Good for you.

Luckily, Beardyman is never at risk of becoming a joke. This is a man who is able to, not only do two things at once, but four or five things at once to absolute pin-point perfection. While he freestyle beatboxes and MCs to an intoxicated Halloween crowd in Bristol, he’s also doing tech support, planning his next drop and switching a big industrial fan on to cool his Mac setup. “I am doing tech support / While I’m playing in Bristol” he chimes, perfectly pitched, over a thudding rhythm made only using strange and otherworldly contortions of his mouth.

Beardyman sucked us into a weird and sometimes disgusting world

An obsession with music technology and looping has seen Beardyman (né Darren Foreman) dive headfirst into a career of making tracks, of which for the average Joe would take a couple of weeks and a couple of different instruments, off the cuff in a matter of seconds. He’s claimed the top spot at the UK Beatbox Championships twice in a row and has squeezed the last bit of juice out of every piece of consumer technology available on the market. His growth from YouTube tech nerd to on-stage tech nerd is joyous; filled with twists and turns that you just aren’t given the option of at a standard gig with a standard setlist.

Setlist smetsmist. Beardyman rocks the boat from the get-go, dressed in a hoodie and jeans and donning a flowery pirate’s hat that quickly made its way to the front row of the crowd, we ride the pink dragon boat down the Tunnel of Terror with our kooky wordsmith narrating as we went. He throws at us 90s dubstep with a hint of Bristol trip-hop which quickly become “too slow, this is too slow, right?” Upping to 190BPM and beyond, we venture into a dirty, bass-thick drum n’ bass drop and pull out the other side into techno. “Isn’t it fucking cool that I made this techno track only using my mouth? I don’t want to be a total nerd about this but, wow.” It is fucking cool.

We slide into what I can only describe as a very guttural, edge-of-throwing-up afrobeat track packed with enough mouth weebles and warbles to intrigue even the most technically astute of us in the Thekla. Imagine a transformer throwing up into vat of acid…but with a beat. From afrobeats we fly into central Asia with cherry blossom strings that swim into a crescendo of noise, before we dip into a slinky dub rhythm and suddenly a stop. “Ok, next.” This is not a gig for someone who likes order, or for those looking to drunkenly sob through flailing arms to their mate, “Oh my god, I love this one!” This is a gig for those who enjoy disruption, maybe elements of confusion, moments of pure draw-dropping-flabbergast. How did he make that noise? Was that a car?

On leaving the gig there was a collective sigh. Normality resumed. Brains reset to standard operating capacity. Turn our minds off and on again to see if we can start comprehending things again. Beardyman slinks back into the shadows, back to his looping lair to cook up more terrifically funny and fucked up mouth explosions.

Video courtesy of Cameron Scott

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