Beardyman @ Chevron Festival Gardens (for PIAF)
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Beardyman, the hardcore looping, beatboxing genius who is surely not completely human, creates the majority of his sounds with his own voice. He is an infinite sound factory and soul spearing language artist.
The ambient, intimate, open air mini-stadium that is the Chevron Festival Gardens was graced with his incomparable presence on Tuesday night. The crowd vibed with excited anticipation as many longstanding Beardy fans were alongside quite a few people who had no idea of what they had come to see and bought with them a fresh openness as they waited.
Beardyman entered with his cool energised swagger and headed straight to the front of the stage to a small desk containing some of his devices. “I know it’s early in the week but no need to be boring … get down here on the dance floor!” he said to the seated ones.
Ten or so took the order and moved down. In between some introductory beats and noises he continued coaxing then encouraged the raising of hands. One of his signature moves is that of building up a track and then stopping it silent to offer a cheeky and intellectually humorous comment like, “Why do I think I can stand up here and tell you what to do … that’s how fascism starts…” and boom straight back into building this ridiculously beautiful concoction of sounds to swirl around and drum into the now moving crowd.
He then moved to a platform which resembled the control centre of some kind of spaceship which it might well have been given the crowd were made to feel like they were being taken on an intergalactic ride of cosmic noise. “I am Beardyman,” he said. “I don’t want to just entertain you, I want to get deep into your brain.”
Yes he knows exactly what he is doing. For the next 15-minutes an ethereal set of beats and sounds played out as blue and white lights spiralled. “I know you want to dance so I will drop the beat,” he said, before deep bass moved the floor and the red lights made the crowd look like slow moving lava. Beautiful. Tribal.
Beardyman appears to use his charisma and understanding of mass psychology to move people, and make them think with his poignant wit and seamless delivery. It’s as if he’s here to evolve the consciousness of the planet his own way, using sonic multi-dimensional and subliminal thought provocation. He’s a pretty cool man.
The stage filled with smoke as he dropped into a reggae groove and the words “we don’t know how to pass the ancient wisdom from our past” were looped and the crowd resonated with love. Then after scrambling Australia’s National Anthem he made his first exit.
There were so many highlights in this incredible show but a scene that is sure to be remembered by all was when he came out on the encore to play musical drum and bass statues. Everyone was standing by then. Beardyman made the D&B and the crowd danced, he stopped the music and the crowd stopped. After a bit of this he announced that it was now to be inverse DnB where the crowd were statues while the music played, and danced in the silence. And with the last silence the crowd danced and Beardyman danced off stage.
Do not miss a Beardyman show if you ever have the chance to see him. Come back soon Beardyman!
AMY SEVEN
