Beardyman has been hailed by the BBC as a “King of Sound, Ruler of Beats” for his amazing skills at beat boxing, looping, and general music making. When I was living in London, I heard of the legend of Beardyman from an agent while working out of the Topspin office at William Morris in Soho. I quickly realized why the “legendary” status was bestowed on Beardyman when I saw videos of him performing and heard his tracks. Beardyman released his album in 2011, “I Done an Album,” which I thought was a wonderful work of art in sound and hilarity. The funny clips in between tracks made me crack up and the cross-genre tracks showed Beardyman’s diverse skills as a master of sound. I couldn’t find an embed of the album to post, but . It has may levels with a variety of styles and genres. A video for one of his tracks, Vampire Skank, is below. The song starts with a skit and then goes into some heavy wup wup wup dubstep with an ironic twist. I got a lot out of that track in 2011.
What really motivated me to post about him today was the Beardyman TED talk video embedded below. It shows the genius and skills of Beardyman and speaks to what can be achieved when the technology is good enough to represent precisely what’s going on his mind. #MadRespect for Beardyman.
A video of one of my favorite Beardyman tracks, Vampire Skank (warning: heavy dubstep mid-way through). Devilishly cheeky.