The mouth of a million sounds BeardyMan brings his beatboxing brilliance to Edinburgh with an extremely ambitious new project. The 400-strong audience and BeardyMan will together, in a race against the clock, produce a brand new album in one hour.
The premise for the show is great; together with BeardyMan we are all in the band and BeardyMan relies on us throughout the show to come up with the theme, title and genre for each musical creation. The audience was more than happy to oblige; the room occasionally transforming into an oversized classroom as BeardyMan tried to control the onslaught of suggestions flying at him from all corners of the packed Debating Hall.
Joining BeardyMan in this epic undertaking is a camera crew and a graphics team spontaneously creating a video stream combining effects playing off BeardyMan’s music as well as whatever relevant images the team could scrounge off the internet. The effect was impressive and hilarious.
The atmosphere of the room was electric as BeardyMan mastered a complex and futuristic set of equipment, providing him with all the gear to affect any musical style, effect and loop system imaginable. The kit was enough to make any DJ cry. This is a journey into the deep crevices of his magnificent musical brain - laying down unique creation after unique creation. No genre was beyond BeardyMan’s brilliant reach. In one hour we witnessed dubstep, hip-hop, ska, drum and bass, acid jazz, masterful free-styling and much more.
The performance had only a few setbacks. One free-style session ended up in a surprisingly aggressive attack on the physical appearance of a television celebrity, which just seemed unnecessary. Also, on taking an audience member’s suggestion to include a song about Django Reinhardt he mistook the world’s most famous gypsy jazz guitarist for a country music playing banjo player. But BeardyMan’s in-depth knowledge of all modern forms of electronica probably buys him forgiveness for this gaff.
There’s no doubt you’re in the presence of an incredibly gifted performer. Beardy Man is one of a kind. This electric hour will redefine the limits of human creativity as you know it.
