Beardyman King - The Beatboxing King Of Sound Redefining Musical Creativity

Full transcript: Beardyman King on London Real

7:33 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose were sponsored today by the folks at x-brain who are the makers of way better protein powder It’s organic made from free-range grass-fed cows. You can get that at x-brain.co.uk. Just like ass-fed cows. No grass-fed That’s better.

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8:02 Customer code London Real 15% off. We’re also drinking bulletproof coffee. Daz is a fan, right? You were liking it. Look at that.

8:09 Perfect. Tim Sheef is drinking it again. Oh yeah. I know. Only on this show, but it’s great.

8:14 Yeah. This is a guy that doesn’t touch caffeine normally. Okay. coffee with molds and toxins that aren’t in there, mix it with grass-fed butter. That sounded more spiritual, no one’s got molds and toxins that aren’t in there. It’s like it has invisible intangible molds and toxins. And I said grass-fed butter and I thought you were going to say grass-fed. I’m just taking your whole shit apart.

8:31 Oh can I swear on this? Yeah we can swear. Well fucking great. There you go, we’re going to be swearing a lot today. So thanks to the guys at Bulletproof, you can get that at XBrain or upgrade itself in the US. So let’s get going guys. My co-host today is Freerunner, Timothy Sheef, who hosts the Flow Show on the YouTube channel Flow. You would have seen Tim on MTV. He’s won the Barkley Freerunning Championship. Daz is learning all about Tim. You do videos with Stuntman, Damian Walters. You’re on rugby commercials for the O2. You do the Life in a Handstand videos, the Love in a Handstand videos. He’s London Real’s favorite barefoot vegan, Timothy Sheef.

9:04 Yes, thank you. That’s good. Thanks for having me again. Cool, man. Thanks for being here.

9:08 You love being here. always good to have you here. And our guest today is Mr. Darren Foreman, AKA Beardyman, who is a musician from London, renowned for his beatboxing skills and use of live looping technology. According to the BBC, you are the king of sound and the ruler of beats, which would be cool if the BBC didn’t say it.

9:28 That’s what I was thinking. I’ve heard the BBC, that’s good. Well, my manager came up with that, me and my manager together came up with that, because they were like, well, how do you want to be billed? And I was like, what about like the king of sound the ruler of beats and we’re like, that’d be funny. And he goes and like convinced them to do it.

9:43 So, that’s good. It was kind of a joke. Yeah, but I’ll go with that. Yeah, the BBC did that, yeah. I like it, I like it.

9:49 Basically the Queen, the Queen decided that’s how the Queen thinks of me. It’s a great, it’s a great handle. So you promised today that you’re gonna rant about the government, trash the room and then cut yourself. I did, yeah. So I’m pretty fucking excited.

9:59 It’s gonna be dope. Welcome, welcome to London Real. Thanks, good to be here, thanks for having me. Yeah, welcome brother. Thanks for being here, I’m really glad you’re here.

10:06 I’m glad you’re not performing because it’s nice to actually talk to the guy who’s behind all the stuff that we do see on YouTube. And you’ve got a lot of videos out there and a lot of performances. So I know, is this strange? Do you do a lot of talking where you’re not performing or does that usually come one with the other? I don’t know.

10:23 Well, it’s, I don’t know. I mean, I’m quite boring, really. I’m just a person sitting in a chair with some opinions and a cat. But I think it’s nice to sort of perform and do stuff because it’s fun to do so. I’ve kind of escaped having a, as we all have, I think, escaped having a job by just doing weird things, it’s fun.

10:44 We were all just talking earlier and we all just realized that none of us has a real job, so. What’s real, man? Don’t rub it in. People can be watching this on their way to work, being like, fuck it, yeah. What’s real, man?

10:54 Yeah. Yeah, but you were saying that what, we provide value by doing these things somehow? Well, yeah, we were talking about whether or not Russell Brand is out of his depth or whether he’s doing, I think he’s performing a useful function regardless of whether he’s, because this is the thing, this whole thing out of Jeremy Paxman the other day, Jeremy Paxman was like, well, what’s your alternative to the present scenario? And he’s like, well, I don’t have one, but that doesn’t matter.

11:20 And I think he’s got a point, like at least he’s- Drawing attention. Drawing attention to the fact that this system isn’t working, so hopefully when someone comes along who does have some alternatives, I mean, the thing is, someone coming along with some alternatives isn’t gonna be the solution. and there needs to be a thorough going public discourse about the nature of a government. And if Russell Brand is going to draw attention to the fact that that discourse needs to happen, then hopefully something will come out of it.

11:46 I mean, there’s this sort of ridiculous piecemeal offering that Cameron gave to Clegg, which for anyone who’s watching outside the UK, this is this sort of coalition that somehow allowed just evil to be perpetuated for the last few years, where the liberal Democrats have always kind of, what’s been said about liberal Democrats has been that they’re fence sitters and that they just go with whatever sort of popular or seems easiest at the time. And I’ve never really bought that, but evidently that is true, at least. It’s happened just because they needed to get into government, so they formed a coalition.

12:23 And the piecemeal offering that Cameron made was like, well, OK, we’ll make a concession towards your sort of policy direction by saying that you can have a you can ask the public what they think about about voting and you know they had this sort of nationwide smear campaign that followed that the Tories put out about the fact that you know any alternative sort of voting system would ruin the country and this was like the non-majority vote they were gonna say you could uh like getting like it’s in in Italy like it takes a certain percentage of the vote and it awards those to the different people as opposed to the majority wins thing and then it got shut down in that whole idea. Yeah, like, I mean, you know, there was a referendum, which was, shall we scrap the current voting system?

13:05 But the Tories made there be fear amongst the whole country about like, well, we don’t, I mean, well, we don’t want to try anything new. I mean, that might, that might damage things. But I mean, you know, the party system is the problem. There’s the fact that democracy, so-called, all across the world has this kind of gang mentality within a parliament. Like, you don’t need side-taking and group mentality and sort of gangland warfare going on essentially with it.

13:36 It’s so childish, beyond childish, it’s the opposite of what democracy should be because you have a whip in each party that makes sure that people don’t vote with their conscience. They vote with whatever the party line is. So it’s tyranny of a different form. What Russell Graham was doing was simply pointing out that there’s people like Noam Chomsky out there who point out the problems. And so for a comedian to be saying, look, he’s doing the same thing that George Carlin has done, or that Bill Hicks has done, and being a sort of vocal proponent of the fact that, call it enlightenment if you want, or just call it learning stuff, being aware of educating yourself.

14:19 But he’s not an activist. And that’s the only thing. I mean, Tim, you’re a big fan, and I know you were saying, I know he puts a lot of exposure to it. And Russell’s known around the world. He’s got almost eight million Twitter followers. That’s a good metric. And, uh, but even you were saying a little earlier that it’s, he can’t always back that up with argument and evidence.

14:35 No, I think he can, but he didn’t have, it was a four minute interview or something. It was 11 minutes, but I’ve seen a lot of times, but what he’s saying is that whichever you vote for, there’s barely any actual change goes on. Politicians these days are only good at being politicians. Like back in Winston Churchill days, a good politician would be someone that really cared and wanted to make a difference and help the people. Now it’s got to a stage where politicians are just good at playing the game of being a politician and getting into power.

14:57 And it’s the same with lawyers. To begin with, they used to care about getting the right person, the right, what should happen to the right person, the right thing happens. Now lawyers are just good at helping their one person and not for the justice of the greater good at all. And he’s pointing out the fact that you can vote for whoever you want and not much really change. It’s a very small parameter change.

15:14 We need a big change and he’s saying he’s not the one that has the answer to it. He’s trying to draw attention to it and that he knows people and he’s obviously, he meets everyone. with a lot of people who will have the answers, people like Jack Fresco who you’ve had on this show, if anyone like Russell Orr was in political power, you want Jack Fresco helping you with environment or with something like that, you get those people underlying you and you draw with people that actually know about these issues like environment or school system, education system or the health service, whereas politicians, they don’t know shit about any of that.

15:43 They just know how to be a good politician, that’s all they’re good. Dude, I like where you’re going and I want to get back to politics, but we got a lot of people in the States that listen to this and I don’t know if they know who you are or not. So what do you do when you meet people on the streets? How do you describe who you are? I mean, I generally avoid the question. I don’t know how to describe your performances if it’s like music or improv or comedy or mashup. I mean, like a little bit of everything and it’s probably changed over the years. I don’t know what I am. It’s for other people to decide. Okay. I saw, I remember I first saw you on YouTube maybe five or six years ago and you were making, baking a cake. That was really funny. The diaries that was you right that wasn’t okay that was pretending to be a people that was genius I was really original and creative thanks yeah yeah and you say you’re nothing you just sit here and you you say you’re just to do with the cat just to do with a cat but when yours that creative and you think that differently it’s not that’s an outlet but there’s obviously you behind that that’s why we’re talking to you we want to yeah I don’t know what I am you shouldn’t that’s good that’s a great you shouldn’t have to know that was super or early days of YouTube, right?

16:48 I mean, nobody was uploading back then. Yeah, well, I’ve been playing music since I was like five. I learned the piano, then I learned the viola and the drums and the basses. I don’t know, so I’ve always been happy as playing music and I was looking for a way to get into playing music and I’ve always beatboxed. I’ve always beatboxed since I was like three years old.

17:11 And so, I mean, I started beatboxing sort of professionally professionally when I was like, I guess like 20 or 21, not even professionally, just like, you know, in public. Because up to that point, it had been a kind of dirty habit, you know, it’s just kind of literally like sort of tapping your fingers on a desk or something. It’s like, it’s annoying. So you weren’t copying anyone, you were just doing it. No, I’d just been so…

17:30 Well, I mean, like, there’s always this comparison with Michael Winslow, the guy from Police Academy, but he wasn’t that much of an inspiration to me in the sense that I’d seen all his films or anything. Like, it was only when YouTube came along that people started posting like clip shows of all his bits in them because no one wants to sit through all the police academy movies. Like he’s the only good thing in the film. They don’t hold up. Yeah.

17:49 There was like the one low job scene and then that’s… I forgot about him until I read your bio and I remember that guy now. Alright. What did he do? Just put a car sound?

17:56 He did everything sound. Video games. You pretend to be playing video games. Yeah. He was brought up on an army base and then with like no friends because there’s no other kids around.

18:06 So he’d just stand there sort of copying the noises of passing engines and stuff like that. But like, I don’t know, I’ve always felt an affinity to him because that’s, you know, I thought that noisemaking was rare and that it was basically me and him. And then, you know, because the internet was appearing, you know, in this current of multimedia format. There were all these videos coming out of other kids my age who… Faith is FX.

18:28 Faith is FX. Before YouTube. Shlomo. Shlomo, yeah. Oh, God.

18:33 Killer Kelly. Killer Kelly, who was like pre-YouTube kind of fame of like, you know, cut his teeth doing like drum and bass raves and stuff like that. And Razzell, who had been playing for like 10 years or something or more, who just had this big breakthrough album at that time, especially for a beatbox. A lot of Men in Black, Bismarcky. Bismarcky.

18:55 Well, I mean, God, we could talk about like the growth of beatbox. Do Bismarcky beatbox, yeah? Yeah. Okay, that was… Kind of, yeah.

19:02 He did in that film, he was in the postman, right? In the post office. Was he? In Men in Black, he did a little bit of like speaking to Will Smith. Oh yeah, in like alien beatbox, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:11 But as beatbox has been getting more and more nuanced since then, I mean, because of YouTube, I started doing stuff on YouTube when it first came out, I mean, it was like seven, eight years ago. And like, and yeah, that kitchen thing he was talking about, that was, I mean, there weren’t that many videos on YouTube at the time, you know, it was like, you know, you could count in the thousands, I guess, at first, you know, the videos that were on there, and so anything that went, you know, there was one beatbox video, I remember, there being one beatbox video on YouTube, it’s a crazy thing now. Like, and it was this guy beatboxing at this like, and he was like doing some side show to like a half empty gig between two bands and he wasn’t very good.

19:49 And it got like a million views, which was loads back then. And like, you know, it’s been passed around by email. Oh my God, this guy’s incredible. And he, the thing was a clip show. So like he beatboxing for five minutes and then, you know, he just, it would cut to him just sitting down.

20:07 He got bored and he was sitting there like beatboxing, sitting down, but people were still really interested by it. Like some people were leaving the auditorium kind of thing and like it was, it was a really shitty performance, but I don’t know what it was called, whether you can still find it now, but it was like massive. So I, I put up some video of like this like stupid self-effacing like beatbox chef thing. And we did loads of take genius. It was a cool idea, but I did it for like, one take as well.

20:30 I mean, it’s a long take. We spent a whole day trying to get a good take. And then we got what we thought was the best take, and then we were kind of, well, we’ll just have to use this one, because we can’t quite get it perfect. And then we realized that the mic was ruffling, so we did it again, and that it was just this amazing take where all the kind of things we were trying to do kind of came together. And then it started racking up views and stuff, and that in a way launched my career, I guess, because there weren’t that many videos on YouTube at the time, so that was kind of unusual.

21:00 And I refused to do any more of those joke beatbox videos. Like I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want that to be my thing, and I didn’t want that to be… Why not? Because… That’s transcending the beatbox, and you’re not just sticking to competitions, you’re…

21:14 Yeah, the beatbox itself is juvenile, it’s just like, I’ve got no time for it, there’s loads of beatboxes now, and I’m happy to see that beatbox is being part of the mainstream in… So you don’t consider yourself just a beatbox anymore, because you do the looping stuff and things like that and it’s you’re like I mean a sound I don’t I’ve never liked beatbox I’ve always thought that it’s ridiculous like it’s not it’s not a job it’s not even an art form it’s not even it’s like a it’s showing off at a party at best but you won the beatbox competition yeah even though 607 right yeah and even then it was like stupid like I kind of I won it by mocking it Like, I won it by sort of making a, doing this weird meta thing of like just being really funny. I wasn’t even very good back then.

22:05 Like, as soon as I won it the first time, I was like, Jesus, I need to really practice now because I’m supposed to be representing and I’m going to get slated if I’m not actually that good. So I just practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced. And then the next year I won it again and then I was like, well, now attention is going to be on me because I’ve won it twice. So now I need to get even better when I practice and practice, but I’ve never been as good as the people like like Roxa Loops or like Faith SFX or you know Razzell and I think anyone’s ever bettered Razzell is the point like I think beatboxing as people kind of see it is people trying to be Razzell trying to do what he did and what he did was a kind of mixture of Kenny Mohammed’s who’s amazing he was like a beatbox progenitor in the sort of late 80s only 90s and stuff who really kind of pushed the art form I say it’s not an art form but it is an art form obviously of course it’s an art form I mean like it’s a very purist art form and it’s like playing the lute it’s like you know what can you get out of this very limited instrument. Limited in the sense, I mean you can make lots of range of noises but the limitation is that you only have this one sound hole and so you can pretend you’re doing more than one thing at the same time. But like Razzell mastered the art of, you know, making people think he was a robot by doing these noises, sort

23:11 Of playing with, you know, it’s this amazing level of performance. I suppose when I got frustrated with it is that even though I know that it is a valid art form and it is a sort of, you know, eminent pursuit. It’s so limiting in terms of what you can do. So like the bookings I was getting were like 10 minutes between bands, or like hosting a big stage, which was great because those people were seeing me, but like, what am I doing? I’m standing there pretending to be a trumpet, pretending to be a, pretending to be like doing covers of other people’s songs, like being a bloody wedding DJ.

23:44 It’s just embarrassing. It’s an embarrassing thing to do. So I’ve never had any respect for it. I’ve never really thought it was like, I never thought it was going to be a career and it wasn’t, you know, it never has been. It was like a sort of, I knew that it had this kind of natural arc and that if I wanted to be in music and I wanted to satisfy the urges that I had to, I mean, I’ve always wanted, I’ve always wanted to be doing what I’m doing now and the next stage that I’m working on, which is all very technologically based, this is something which I’ve always wanted to do, which is the idea of being able to do what you can do with beatbox but have it not be shit.

24:19 So like you imagine music in your head and it just happens, which is something that many have dreamt of doing, but no one’s ever bothered to try really. People have made like any piece of music tech you see is in some way or another an effort to do that, like to try and make it easier to make the sounds you hear in your head or to try and make it easier to experiment freely and have your experiments turn into the viable sounds by you working with the technology so that you were one thing. And a happy accident can happen that can spur an idea.

24:52 There’s all kinds of crazy technology that people are innovating, mostly in code these days. But there’s hardware as well. But what I’m trying to do is to specifically reduce the amount of time that it takes to make the sounds in your head. And I’ve invested heavily in a system which I now use, where I’ve got these coders to help me, well, these coders are building this thing for me in code. This is your proprietary software.

25:18 This is my proprietary software, and that’s where my main focus is now because beatbox is great, but it’s novelty as hell, and you can try and be purist about it, but if you’re purist about it, then you just end up with the same trick over and over and over again, and you can keep innovating new sounds, but there are always derivations of the same four or five key sounds. you can try and sort of be a better and better showman, which is, I mean, that’s a valid pursuit, but at the same time, you’re never gonna keep a crowd going for an hour just on your own with your mouth and have it not be slightly limiting to your ideas unless you change what your ideas are, so they’re focused on the art form. I mean, I suppose like, if you are really, really focused on a particular art form, then you work with those limitations and you learn to love those limitations, you know what I mean?

26:06 Like with free running, like they would probably be cheating to strap on a rocket pack, as nice as that would be. You’d be like, oh, I’m restricted by my human body. Maybe I can teleport. You spend those money trying to make a teleporting machine or flying or something. But if you’re going to be purist about it, you go, well, what can I do with it?

26:17 So I guess I’ve always been impatient with, so impatient with the limitations because they weren’t my original. My original dream was just to make music as fast as I could think of it. So that’s always what I’ve been interested in. So I suppose I don’t want to diss all beatboxes and say that it’s juvenile. You’re going to hear about this.

26:35 Were you the first one to do the looping And what year was that, that you combined music with your beatbox and the looping? I have not really been the first to do anything. I’ve seen beatbox do it, I’ve seen there’s another guy. I was the first to do what I’m doing in terms of, no, I was the first to use the actual setup that I was using, which was like chaos pads. So as soon as they came out, I was like, well, that might work.

26:57 And at that point, I already had a whole bunch of hardware that I was using, which just wasn’t working. Is that MPC? No, MPC, it was single to loop relative. And it was made by one dude in his garage and he had like a liver complaint, and I was like, dude, this thing keeps crashing on me. Nothing.

27:11 So I was like, well, this isn’t gonna work. So I had to use some sort of shop bought stuff. So the ChaosPad came out, I was like, well, this kind of does all the things I wanted to do, but it’s kind of clunky. So I was always working on like a sort of setup, which was lots of different machines, lots of different bits of hardware, lots of different bits of software, and I kept iterating and iterating, but it never reached stability enough for me to actually use it live.

27:33 So I was just building up ChaosPads, loads of these fucking chaos pads linking together and increasing the composition. It’s like, oh, nine, four years ago, five years ago, when you started playing with the chaos. Back in the day, I think they came out in 2007, chaos pad three, which is the one I was using. And that, yeah, that was my sort of staple piece of technology from then onwards. But I just, I cracked, I think, like a couple of years ago where I was like, this isn’t what I want to be doing.

27:58 The chaos pads are so limiting that I keep having to do covers of other people’s music still to keep the crowd really interested and I don’t want to be doing covers. I’ve been writing songs since I was five years old. Why am I doing covers? And it was not just that but I wanted to be doing dance music and the Chaos Pads are right but they’re not. You can’t do proper, proper dance music with side-chaining and mixing and all this technical music production stuff.

28:24 I mean the Chaos Pads are great but they don’t do that stuff and it was just an arse about tit way of making music and I was just losing my mind and I was just like well do I use Ableton like everyone else does, which is just my music tech software that everyone uses, or do I build my own thing? Because at this point, I had loads of failed attempts at trying to build the perfect system using bits of other people’s software and stuff, and I was just like, none of this is working. Were you having success musically at this point, or when did you become not Beardyman Man the beatboxer, but Beardyman Man the performance guy?

28:54 I don’t know, really. It’s a true transition I’m still trying to make. I had some success with beatboxing when I won the beat book championships. And this is incredibly self-indulgent, talking about this stuff. We’ll get to the other stuff.

29:06 That’s why we’re here. They’ll know who you are, then we’ll get back to the politics, Russell Brand. Right, yeah. And you’re cutting yourself. Yeah, I don’t know.

29:15 That was a question. Like, when could you actually make money as a performer? Where you added the loops in and added music, and was it like, oh, nine or 10, where they’re like, okay, we want you to, we will pay you to come here. And you’re like, wow, there’s thousands of people coming to watch me perform, and I’m not just beatboxing anymore. Do you remember that moment, or was that a certain point in time?

29:32 I don’t know. I’ve kind of taken a really arse-backwards way of doing what I’m doing. I’m still making music in a really twisted, non-logical way, and it doesn’t really make sense. No, but you’re creative. You’re trying.

29:49 It’s great. I guess so. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You’re out of the box thinking.

29:54 You’ve got to be doing it. You can’t just follow. You don’t want to follow the path that’s been laid out a million times before. Well, I might follow it. And you’re very honest about beatboxing as well.

29:59 I saw Pink Floyd interviews back in the 70s and they were like, you know, how do you do it? You know, you’ve never played ball with the charts and stuff and you’ve never never released singles, you know But yet you still achieve success, you know, it’s but you you know You eschew that route and they’re like, we’re not eschewing it. We’re still trying to figure out how to do it I don’t know whether that was just them being self-effacing. But like I was thinking when Daz came over here I was like, I don’t think we’d ever see him like when he’s 50 years old But like a big gut in Vegas like and here’s Daz the beatboxer I just you you seem that when you get bored with something you move on well There’s a kind of John Lennon talking about how he didn’t want to be Was when he’s 50 singing love love me do whatever it is, you know, yeah, he still is well, no and then you know He’s dead. Yeah, sorry. He wouldn’t have been anyway. I mean other people like that people like oh Christ, I mean what radiohead or Anyone who’s continually reinventing themselves because there’s loads of examples like, you know, I mean, that that’s more that these are the people I look up to respect. Like I don’t like the idea of limiting yourself to one particular thing. I don’t like the idea of having a thing. Yeah, like you because you as a human have got so much more to give and some people do limit themselves. I am this now and that’s all I’m going to be. Yeah,

31:13 God, I mean, people you have like one big hit and then they live off that for the rest of their life. And then that’s their thing. That’s what they do. The thing is even like you know Radiohead refused to play Creek. Can’t be content with that kind of yeah. Like Nirvana never wanted to play Teen Spirit because they’re like we don’t want to have a thing that’s our thing that’s that’s the thing we’re known for which is the dumbest thing we’ve done. Right now as we speak I’m at number two in the charts with a track out there with Fatboy Slim and Calvin Harris and it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. It’s me talking shit and the tracks It’s called Eat Sleep, Rave, Repeat.

31:43 That was you on that. Yeah. And it’s like, you quite like it. Well, I respect that you’re number two in the charts. It’s a dumb tune.

31:52 It’s the dumbest tune. It’s going to annoy people because it’s like Eat Sleep, Rave, Repeat, Eat Sleep, Rave, Repeat. I heard it on someone and it’s annoyed me, but I respect it. It’s an annoying tune. But I respect that you played the game though.

32:02 You played the game though and you got number two. Well, no, I mean, I went into Fatboy Slim’s studio and he was like, I’ve had this idea, Eat Sleep, Rave, Repeat. And I’m like, that’s quite funny. And he’s like, can you imagine you’ve been up for three days and to talk? And I was like, all right.

32:14 So, I mean, we talked a bit, like exchange stories about things we’ve done with been on three date benders and then I just talked some shit and then he stuck it together. I forgot all about it. A year and a half later, he’s like, I’ve put this together, what do you think? I’m like, it’s quite funny, I guess. And he stuck it on a mixed CD and thought nothing more about it.

32:31 And then he’s gone, oh, Calvin Harris has done a remix of it. We’re gonna put it out. I was like, okay, well, it’s actually, to be honest, it’s quite kind of ravey and whenever I’ve seen it being played out live, Like, Steve Aoki’s opening his sets with it. Like, Tiesto’s playing his sets with it, man. Like, you know, Norman Cook’s playing it.

32:45 David Guetta’s closing his sets with it and shit. Like, you know, none of these DJs, apart from Norman Cook, are DJs who I particularly like. But like, they’re huge and they smash it. And the tune goes down amazingly. And to be fair, there’s no annoying trance stabs in it.

32:59 There’s kind of, it’s like an acid tune. It is acid. So like, I don’t hate it at all. Like, I quite like it. Like, the video’s quite good as well.

33:08 They did this thing, there was this film brought out in the 50s called They Shoot Horses Don’t They that you might have heard of, which was a fiction, but it’s based on truth about these American depression era dance competitions where people would have to dance until they dropped for a paltry few hundred dollars or something. It would have been less than that in the 30s. People would pass out and die. So they restaged one of these events for real, but it was like a rave, so they had drug tests before to make sure no one was on drugs, they had bouncers, it was in this little warehouse space, they had a sort of showcorder at the front picking people off the dance floor if they were slowing down and stopped dancing.

33:52 It was savage, like it starts off like it’s a really fun kind of tradition idea and by the end of it, it’s just, it’s brutal, brutal, yeah it’s somewhere in London I think, it’s not that close to here, somewhere in East London. How long was that last? I think the one who danced the longest was like, you even had to dance in the toilet, you know, and they’ve got footage of people like dancing in the toilet. And then like, I think the longest dancing was like, it wasn’t that long, it was like 12 hours or something, but that’s still quite a lot, like no drugs or anything.

34:16 That’s like a long time to be dancing. So like, I don’t know, so the video is really cool. It’s just got like, play this, the trouble though with the way the radio works in the UK, and I know this like, plays into the hands of the record companies. And in this instance, it’s probably helped with my chart position and all this crap. Like, it’s really weird the way that mainstream radio works is that you have like a playlist which is like you have your A rotation, your B rotation, and the A rotation they play the same ten songs every couple of hours, the B list they play the same ten songs like every day.

34:49 I don’t know whether there’s a C list or anything like that. There is something below that but that’s just like… And radio still matters? a massive smaller than ever, because the music industry is so diffuse that it’s, you know, this is… Only thing tying it together.

35:03 Radio 1 is music for people who don’t care about music. Radio 1 is music for people who are indifferent to music. It’s music for people who are doing other things while they need some kind of soundtrack to be able to distract them from the hell that is their lives. It’s like, you’ll listen to it in a shop by force, you’ll listen to it in barbers because you have no choice, you’ll listen to it in the office because some dickhead has put it on. Like, it’s not a good thing.

35:25 At night they have specialist shows and dance shows which are pretty good but like even then you’ve got to choose the show or you never know what you’re gonna get but like yeah the mainstream sort of play this and stuff the DJs don’t choose it and then they have to say that’s the great new track and they don’t necessarily think so there’s this sort of tissue of lies which envelops the whole of the music industry that is mainstream radio and I’m now part of that whether I like it or not and to be fair to Norman Cook like he cut the bollocks that I chatted into something which was genuinely quite funny the The actual song, like not the Kevin Harris remix, is kind of this harmless kind of vocal like prose sort of house track, which is, you know, it’s funny, you know, it’s not like laugh out loud hilarious, but it’s quite entertaining.

36:11 There’s nothing clever about it. Does that help you being on the charts? I mean, does it? Who knows? But it might hinder me as much as it helps me because people are going to hate it.

36:19 Okay. No, it’s not the fucker. If you hadn’t known it. I respect that. talking about that, if I’d have just mentioned Eat Sleep Waver Beat, you’d have been like I fucking hate that tune. You know what you’re like, you put it in there.

36:28 I don’t hate anything, I did annoy you when I first heard it. Exactly, it would annoy me if I’d first heard it. But that’s because it’s very commercial, but I always respect like Skrillex, like I hate his music. He’s a genius. But he plays it well.

36:40 He hasn’t done, like… He plays it well. No, he’s a fucking genius. He’s a production genius. Um, yeah. I actually quite like the production on the Eat Sleep Waver Beat cabin. I think it’s quite good, but there’s There’s nothing, again, there’s nothing clever about it.

36:52 It’s just like, I don’t know, I think like Skrillex’s stuff is absolutely just amazing. The amount of skill that goes into, but he winds some people up. Some people hate Skrillex, but fine. This is the problem with like success is that you get, it’s probably different for someone like you where there’s so much skill in what you do that like no one’s gonna hate on you, apart from maybe other new runners who are like, ooh, this is bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:14 But like most people will just, no one will be like, oh, free running just winds me up. Maybe like old people will, Because they’re like… If someone says that… Rapscallion is crowding up. Then they are, yeah.

37:22 They live in fit. They’re like, oh, you’re going to hurt yourself, but they just see the world through their own eyes and they don’t appreciate other people who have… Cousin of mine is like 19 and he’s just going on to, going on his gap year and he’s like, I want it to be as dangerous as possible. I want to go work in a mine. I’m like, what is wrong with you?

37:36 I’m like, oh no, you’re 19. That’s it. And he’s just like full of the need for adventure and I’m like, are you fucking crazy? That’s like, it’s a really dangerous, toxic thing to do, but he’s like, yeah, I just want some danger. Jesus.

37:47 Did you ever DJ, or did you ever want to do that? Or do the Ibiza scene, or did you do that? Yeah. Well, I’ve played Ibiza a couple of times. How was that?

37:56 Yeah, it was cool. I mean, you know, it’s its own world, Ibiza. Well, it was its own world. It was kind of very sort of closeted, sort of only a specific kind of music with a kind of particular cabal of DJs. But I say that as if there’s something sinister about it.

38:10 They’re the original guys that originated dance music in its modern form. And the scene and the whole industry of dance music started with those people, like Carl Cox and stuff, people who were at Ibiza. The scene started in Ibiza, like Brits and Germans and stuff. Going out to Ibiza, at first it was kind of a sort of holiday destination, stroke, hippie haunts. And then it turned into a sort of weird amalgamation of both when ecstasy came along.

38:34 And suddenly this huge thing happened in 1988 where people realized that football violence decreased by an order of magnitude. Because people were seeing each other at games that they’d seen in raves. and we’re like, what a mate, instead of seeing people that they’d seen in the pub and throwing chairs at, you know, it was, it really, that affected the cultural landscape. And then what’s Ibiza like now, is it commercialized, or are you not one of those people that says that?

38:58 Because it has changed a lot. Well, of course it’s commercialized, I mean, everything has, you know, global progress is on a steady sort of march towards running water and electricity. But Ibiza in the 70s was a completely different place. People say there’s like a good energy, like Bruce Parry lives there, he lives there. Oh yeah, well there’s, I got married there recently.

39:14 Oh really? Yeah. Wow. And like it’s this kind of, I said that with like some regret, it’s more just that people look at it and people are like, well, hold on mate. No, but it’s dope.

39:24 It was literally the best day of my life. Awesome. That’s a strong statement. No, it is. Because like I thought that being on drugs would be, you know, one of those experiences would be the best day of my life.

39:33 And I genuinely thought, I was like, well, that’s something girls say about their wedding. Is it the best day of my life? But actually it was the best day of my life. All my friends came along to Ibiza, which is just this beautiful, and because this is the thing, it’s like when people think of Ibiza, it’s this kind of horror, you know, vision of like roaming packs of predatory males out to get as fucked as possible and like just, you know, slags and just awful music, but it’s not that.

40:01 There is that side to it, like San Antonio is that, but you go outside of San Antonio and there’s beautiful clubs. you go outside of that, there’s this idyllic sort of, you know, forest-coated sort of mountainous paradise, really, of kind of, I mean, obviously it used to be a lot more kind of untouched, and now it has been more commercialized. But you still have the kind of Ibsinian culture existing in pockets. You still have this kind of hippie mentality which kind of exists there still.

40:34 And certainly in the kind of northern sort of side of the island, it’s idyllic. Absolutely idyllic. There is another side to Ibiza. Because in the 70s, it was a hippie place. It was like a complete, so hippie retreat, but there’s a lot of San Franciscans went over there.

40:52 Like, you know, when the hippie bubble burst, a lot of them were like, well, you know, Hate Street got crowded with dickheads and the American public’s kind of turned against us and the police don’t like us. Where can we go now on the side of Ibiza? Like early 80s and they just got out or late 70s like early 70s Okay Well, like was hate Street was cool for like six months and then you got these like busloads of just assholes thinking well We can get sex here and there’s drugs here and then the wrong drugs started happening and the wrong sex that had happened and hate Street got really ugly and the hippies moved out and They moved to Ibiza a lot of the moves would be there some of the moves would be there Some of them just moved out and joined cults in the desert and shit and they got weird And the wedding was good. Yeah, sorry wedding was brilliant. Yeah No, it’s amazing the best day of my life I used to hate on weddings too But it’s like the one day where all of your friends will make an effort to show up and if you’re in a really cool place Like a beat that everyone’s having a good time. We spent like two days partying in the pool. Like Yeah, makes me nervous talking about weddings. Is that why you walked through your neck? Just not ready Me neither, and I’m older than you. Yeah, if you find the right girl, it’s a good idea. I think so I agree with it, but how do you know?

42:02 Yeah, that’s true. You obviously had a great time. Well, you can never know. You’ve got to take a guy on camera. Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

42:07 Well, you’ve got to know. You’ve got to know. Yeah. Well, you better know otherwise. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:12 I’m waiting to know. Don’t be asking. I watched your TED Talk. It came out recently. You’re going to ask about TED Talk.

42:17 How was that whole experience? Were you nervous? Did you know what to talk about it? Fuck, it was nerve-wracking. Was it?

42:22 Well, yeah. I mean… You got one shot, right? Yeah, you only got one shot. I haven’t cured any diseases or redesign in these cities, so there’s no real reason for me to be there, other than that I can sort of, I mean, I was keen to talk about this technology ahead.

42:37 I mean, now, looking back at it, I think it was premature that I was demonstrating this technology and trying to shout about it as if it was interesting, because, like, everyone in there was a dot-com billionaire or millionaire, like, you know, it’s kind of this Silicon Valley, you know, haven where it was like, hey, got a million dollars, got four, no, $7,000 US dollars I think it is for a ticket. Wow. Yeah, that’s what you don’t see on the videos, is that everyone in that room is beyond rich.

43:04 And they don’t pay you to perform? No. And yours was a 10, proper 10. They meet your costs. But you don’t get any guest lists because they have like £7,500 per ticket.

43:18 So why would they? And the people that go and watch today then get to speak to the people that showed afterwards and be like, I want to invest. Yeah, so in that sense, it’s kind of priceless like you so you got a great audience for what you do Yeah, you don’t want to be you don’t need to be paid on top of that audience. You can’t put a price on the audience Exactly. Exactly. I mean and then you get to hang out with all these Millionaires, but they’re not they’re not assholes. They’re all very I mean, there’s a bit of kind of one-upmanship that goes on obviously But no one’s comparing Rolexes. You know, they’re more comparing I mean, it’s more that you know who’s who.

43:56 Matt Grenning was there, and he created what we now know is comedy, I guess. I don’t know. I was so starstruck by so many people that Amanda Palmer was there, and she’s kind of a heroine of sorts. And then there’s like, yeah, Matt Grenning. The guy that invented, every website that you use, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both there.

44:20 I was like, oh, someone’s wearing Google class. It’s Sergey Brin. Fuck. Like, you know, there’s just sitting there, sort of tapping away, like, oh, yeah, just like- Is it cultish? I mean, there’s been some- It is a bit cultish.

44:34 There’s been the Ted Fellows, like Eddie Huang, who was on the Rogan Experience and a few people- Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, that have said that, you know, he- Man, I felt his pain. I felt his pain. They came down hard on me about guest lists and stuff, like, I was trying to get my wife into stuff and we, like, yeah, this is the thing, like, I’m like, is my wife, like, this is virtually, virtually me, it’s like a whole other half of, please let her in, they’re like, no.

44:57 So they’re very strict about like formats, what you have to attend and all that stuff, but I guess that’s what makes it great. Well, if you’re a TED fellow, like, um, that’s different, like Eddie, he went, he was a TED fellow. He walked away. Yeah, he was a TED fellow. Then they’ve deemed you interesting enough to have your presence be required and they require your presence.

45:15 This is what he was talking about. I wasn’t actually aware of exactly how strict they were on the Ted Fellows until I saw that which is interesting. You know this whole story? No. So he was a Ted Fellow which means they put you as, I guess, you know.

45:23 Is he the Vice guy? No, this is the, he did a few things on Vice, he does a cooking thing. Yeah. He’s like a Chinese American, a Korean American, a Chinese American, I’m going to get in trouble for that. But he had to be there for like a certain, I think he had to be there for five days straight.

45:36 Like the area. How did he get that authority, that right? They deemed him interesting. The Ted Fellow he accepted. What makes him interesting? What’s he expecting? What is he? He’s like the younger Anthony Bourdain. He’s like a rock and roll chef. He’s got like a whole different view on immigration, on growing up, you know, in America, mixed race or all this stuff. And he does these shows, he’s a chef, he wrote a book and they liked So like you’d be a fellow and think when he got there He didn’t realize all the commitments and he left to go do the Rogan show and they were like you can’t leave and he’s like What are you talking about? So he was like fuck you guys Yeah, great anyways, so Ted has that kind of weird slightly cultish. I mean like It’s interesting. What’s head of doing because they’re doing a very Progressively agenda effort to disseminate useful and innovative ideas To try and make the world fairer better better, more efficient, more progressive, and perhaps more liberal and forward thinking.

46:40 So you can’t really fault them for what they’re doing, but obviously they’re kind of take no prisoners’ attitude to the minutiae of things and wind some people up. But I mean, there was one bit of controversy that I did find a little bit weird, which was that they had, for the TEDx things, obviously they have to be slightly prescriptive about what they will and won’t allow in a TEDx talk because they can’t control every single aspect. They banned Graham Hancock. Yeah, we’ve had Graham Hancock here. Oh, yeah, exactly.

47:06 And also they have a thing over there. And you can’t talk about food as medicine, which is horseshit because that is… So yeah, you didn’t go into too much detail about this, but you could more because this is cool. But you can’t… That’s crazy. You can’t talk about food as medicine. I’ve seen some talks like that. You can’t. Where they have talked about tomorrow does this feel… Maybe they just want to limit the amount of people who are talking about it. Yeah, I think so. That’s crazy. But yeah, but you’re not allowed to do it.

47:31 So they have some rules. They have, yeah, but I don’t know if, yeah, so if you’ve seen people do talks about it, then I’m sure they’re not against it. But they just probably don’t want to make sure that it’s just hammering the point home again and again and again. But then again, you know, there are too many superbugs being created. The immune system is our best, like fight against disease. Bolstering that is the best way to get around it. Like reducing the cost of health care is important and that can be done by by using food as medicine.

47:55 I was, I had a stomach upset and I went to NHS hospital and I was on a drip for five days. I just came back from India and I had like compiler backs, it was awful. So like, yeah, I was a savage, but like, and they were giving me like milk at, at meal times and I was like, give me dairy, yeah. Really bad, like you shouldn’t be there, but so, and that’s in like a hospital. So, but at the same time, they didn’t talk to each other.

48:16 They’ve just introduced homeopathy as a treatment on the NHS and there’s, there’s no evidence that homeopathy works. Like, I mean, there is evidence that acupuncture works. There is evidence that all different kinds of alternative medicine do have results. Homeopathy is not science. It’s not a thing.

48:34 What’s homeopathy? That’s where these infinitely small amounts of… Like different toxins and they heal and some people will really believe in it. Yeah, I’m not convinced. Can’t they just give people plants and trees to look at?

48:45 There you go. That’s supposed to work, right? That probably has them, you can see a tree outside. The power of placebo is really strong. It’s like, if you believe you’re gonna get better, you stand a higher chance of getting better.

48:53 So that’s why the power of prayer, supposedly, has slightly different meaning. That’s why the problem is when doctors are very pessimistic and they can’t say, oh, you’re going to be fine, and then you’re not, because then you could sue them. And then even that approach itself, they’re like, oh, but it could be bad. And then that makes you come in with a negative attitude and straight away you’re afraid that it’s not going to get better, and then it doesn’t.

49:11 Whereas if they were like, you’re going to be fine, some people might not be fine, but 100% the placebo effect, more of people would be better. Placebo effect is huge. It’s so big. 60 Minutes did a thing on that. And they were with a pharmaceutical company And they admitted that like 40% of their success was placebo or 50% and they’re like what the hell and they’re like Well, yeah, but still they would rather prescribe the drugs. Can I ask you something about on the TED talk you did the monk That two-tone, throat singing. Do you make two noises at the same time? You do an over tone. So like you have your like Well, any any sounds apart from a pure sine wave, which is like this Like the sinusoidal.

49:49 Like the omnoise? Like a… No. Okay. It’s that you can’t really generate it.

49:55 Like you can’t do it, like if you were able to do it then you’d like synthesizers can do it, but even they’re not entirely pure, it depends how you… Anyway. So like any note that can be generated using like an organic system or something is like made of loads of different overtones or can be analyzed in that way. And if you accentuate any of those overtones, it sounds like you’re singing to your notes at the same time. But you’re not actually.

50:24 You’re not, but who’s to say? I mean, it’s… That was the basis of your talk, is that you started off by saying… Well, you know, I could have gone into it a lot more about that. But I found that fascinating alone, because surely, how long does that take you to learn?

50:35 Or is that a weird question? Could you just do that? Or did you like… I’m still not an expert. Okay.

50:41 But did you see monks or hear monks do it and be like, I want to try and learn that particular thing. Yeah. if you’re properly doing it then you can kind of almost circular breathe it and you can kind of do it for you know and it helps you to sort of meditate and achieve mindfulness and stuff like that but I mean I you know well how do you take care of your voice that’s what I wanted to know I’m like do you do you add you have formal lessons or do you avoid voice train oxygen metal then there’s I mean you really strain your voice a lot right actually I kind of damaged my throat fairly badly like a couple of years ago to to the point where it sounded damaged, it felt damaged, it was painful, I was like, this isn’t good, because of that, reeeeet, that like.

51:22 That’s it. Jeez. It’s not a good thing to do with your voice. And I went and saw like an ENT specialist and I was like, what am I actually doing here when I do that? I was like, what’s going on?

51:32 So he stuck a thing down my nose and he was like, go on, do it. And I was like, basically your vocal cords are like a cat’s vagina. They’re like this. They’re really small. They’re like a tiny little vagina.

51:42 And they kind of, they’re tiny. So what makes it, it’s just the sort of shape of your mouth that sort of, well there’s an incredible amount of air that goes through it to sort of make this loud sound. But then you’ve got these other sort of flaps that you only use when you kind of shout, like when you start to go, like, ah! Like, you know, ah! That kind of, you jump to it.

52:02 Okay. Like that, ah! Like that, or if you’re doing an impression of a Wookiee or something, that if you kind of fold them in, like really squeeze your throat, then they start to sort of vibrate. Okay. And you can get them to vibrate in accordance with like as a kind of an undertone of the note you’re singing so they flap at like half the rate.

52:17 Okay. Yeah. And you damage your voice doing that? It can be damaging doing it. In fact, what the ENT guy told me was that like people who have damaged their vocal chords end up talking with that.

52:27 So when you hear like 60 year old women who have smoked all their lives and they sound like this. That’s why it’s because they’re talking with the flaps just above the real ones that aren’t meant to be used for that really. That’s why you have a limited range when you’re sort of talking like that. That’s really interesting. So are you careful now with your voice?

52:42 Yeah, I’m more careful. I mean I just, well I used to smoke and I used to like drink more heavily, especially like, there were times when I’d like, I’d be beatboxing loads, doing that noise loads and then come off stage and then sort of be like, right, pass me a spliff, right, pass me some alcohol. And then I’d be in like a smoky room just shouting, you know, and then I’d wake up the next morning and be like, I can’t do this, go tonight, you know, so you can’t do that.

53:04 There are chews here. Yeah. Are you always like going around the world and like studying different like vocal techniques or watching what people do, or is it not that specific, what you do? Well, there’s loads of beatboxes now who are just incredible, like, I mean, really incredible. The art form has progressed so much since I started.

53:27 You said it wasn’t an art form. I did say it wasn’t an art form, didn’t I? But I suppose, I don’t know. Let me rephrase that. It is an art form, but it’s not one that I’m interested in pursuing.

53:35 Fair enough. That’s a better way of saying it. It’s progressed so much because, well, I don’t know if the art form itself has progressed in terms of how it’s used or like its breadth, but in terms of the range of sounds, it has increased, not necessarily into, like there’s a certain number of sounds that you can make. There’s like, you can do stuff with your lips, like, or like, which is like, so yeah, which is with the kind of loosened sides with the lips smacking together, which is the inside of your lips. It sounds like farts, but you can tune each one differently. It doesn’t sound very good here, but if you’re on a microphone and you’re cupping it and stuff, then it’s really loud.

54:26 So that’s just the lips, and then you’ve got, you know, with your lips as well. It all sounds like farts. It’s just stupid. And then you’ve got things you can do with your voice, like the overtoning thing I was doing, or like all the different crazy things you can do, all the different tonalities you can get with your voice. You can whistle, you can whistle through your teeth, whistle using your tongue, you can whistle using your lips, you can do like, you know, which is like with air in your teeth. So there’s loads of different places you can make noises with using your face. But no one has discovered anything new you can do with it in about 6, 6, 7 years really, other than combining those or doing noises is using those different things, but crazily sort of different sounding noises using that.

55:15 But I’ve not heard any real innovation. This is the thing, when I was fascinated by beatbox for about a year, like between the beatbox championships that I won, I guess I was, at that point, I wanted to be the first person to get like a beatbox only, a single mouth only song in the charts. That was my dream for that year. I was like- Did you make a song? That’s what I’m, no, because I tried and I tried to think of how you would do it.

55:40 I’m sure I saw one of you where your head was spinning on a… So no other instruments. Yeah, that wasn’t my head. Just your voice. But there was a rapper on that.

55:47 What was that? Well, I’ve done things with beatbox that I thought were interesting and I’ve never wanted to repeat myself. So that’s why I didn’t want to do any other ideas doing novelty beatbox comedy sketches because I was like, well, that’s… it’s now trite because I’ve done it. And I didn’t want people to say, oh, that wasn’t as good as the last one you did.

56:02 That was better. Yeah. So I wanted to just move on and just redefine what it was. So I did… I’ve done sort of projects that are really interesting like…

56:08 Film-wise? Yeah, no, I think so. I think some people get caught up in one thing and it worked. Let’s keep doing that But it’s like but I mean so, you know on the flip side of that some people focus on an art form and and keep trying Like I don’t know. I’ve heard it was like Woody Allen in the lift like Woody Allen has stuck to movies stuck to not the same genre necessarily, but like kept hammering away at the same themes of love and death and You know matters of the heart versus matters of the mind and tragedy versus comedy and all these kind of things and just kept hammering away at the same things and like I mean, maybe that’s a poor example because he’s an incredibly diverse filmmaker these days, but like I don’t know, someone like yourself looking for new ways to challenge yourself all the time, ways to keep the art pure. At first when I started doing looping I was, I got a bit of hate from people for sort of making, diluting the art form or kind of polluting it with ideas that aren’t pure.

57:02 Yeah, like this is just technology and then you know, there were some comments about that like that on the on the TED talk We’re like what assisted it has this to do with the voice like how’s this, you know, this isn’t it? And I think I get the technology now these kind of negative comments are Look what they can do these days kind of comments I know it says those particular words, but it’s more like oh, well, they’ve been able to do that for years Who the fuck is they? Like there is no they like there’s only a we like, you know, the iPhones Yeah, you want a bit of these iPhone sucks like does it could you make one?

57:37 Yeah, Louie see case got a whole bit about this and he’s right Like we are humans representing humans. Yeah, like we are the ones that make the technology Like if you see something which even vaguely works, that’s amazing than that works, you know Is anyone doing the looping stuff that you’re doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s there’s loads now Ed Sheeran did all right off that, like, that kind of almost made it. I was chatting with Ed Sheeran the other day, I met him at this thing I was doing in LA.

58:02 Yeah. And… Who is he? He’s like… Very popular.

58:08 Yeah, like really… British singer made it in America, he just sold out Madison Square Garden three days in a row. Did he? Yeah. Shit.

58:14 He’s there right now. That’s huge. What does he do similar type live? He started out as doing looping. Wow, okay.

58:19 But he could sing… He’s a really good singing voice and guitar as well and he’s blew up. He’s heard Madison Square Garden three times? Yeah, three days. That’s incredible.

58:27 That’s amazing. That’s amazing. No, I was chatting to him and he’s like, he’s like, yeah, I’m working with his producer Rick Rubin. I was like, shut up. Exactly.

58:35 I know who Rick Rubin is, but it’s probably nice of him to be so humble. He’s not being like, yeah, I’m working with Rick Rubin. He’s still like downplaying it. No, he’s a really nice guy. So you’re making this technology because you want people to use it?

58:45 Well, because you just want to create it. Well, I need a technology to exist so that I can do what I want to do. But I was chatting to him about this technology because it turns out Rick Rubin has a way of working with Ableton where, which is the psych production software, and you can do kind of loopy things with it where he’s got like, I don’t know what the exact setup is, but it streams into Pro Tools somehow. So without getting too nerdy, what that means is he’s into looping, which is really interesting because I met Herbie Hancock at TED, and we really got on, and he’s awesome, which Which is dope, because you’d want him to be awesome, wouldn’t you?

59:25 And I went to his studio, and I jammed with him for like three hours, so I guess I can die now. And he goes, because we started talking, because he uses a bit of leaping in his sets when he’s playing solo now, because he’s been touring with a band, and now he’s just doing things on his own. And he’s massively into technology, as you would expect, I guess. He’s still kind of on the cutting edge, he’s like, you’ve seen those leap motion devices where they sort of track your fingers, like they’re really dope, you can now sort of, you know, swipe at your screen kind of thing, and like, they’re really dope.

59:55 Anyway, so he’s trying to use them for music, or they sent him on to see if he could. But anyway, so he’s interloping, so I started talking to him about it. But like, my plan, I guess, is to sort of make this thing work for me, give it to people like Johnny Greenwood, who I know does some looping, Imogen Heap, who is interloping, like Ed Sheeran and God’s, yeah, Rick Rubin and people like that. That’s the thing, like first try and give it to these pioneers and stuff.

1:00:26 Because the thing is I’ve got a theory about looping, which is kind of sort of kooky and not necessarily correct, but I kind of feel that looping is fundamental to what music is in that when you’re making melodies, you’re making things which loop in a way, they’re which iterate and which change over time, or change according to patterns over time, which is just mathematical alterations upon a particular theme. It’s definitely formulas to music that help me. Exactly, and that’s how you look at Bach, and he’s doing these crazy Mandelbrot sets of self-iterating musical inversions and stuff.

1:01:05 And then you’ve got your sort of standard musical formulas which are all mathematically expressible. And I feel that looping, well not just looping isn’t like something goes round and round, which is what Ed Sheeran does, which is amazing that he’s managed to use the same loop pedal he was using when he started. But he’s got the guitar and that’s his main instrument of expression, I guess. But he doesn’t need all this crazy stuff, but there’s people like Tim Exile who is my mentor in a way.

1:01:34 And we have this frenemy thing going on where we love what each other is doing and we love each other as people and we inspire each other but like he was doing what I was doing way before I was doing it and I was inspired by him to do it because I was like holy shit you can make dance music in real time and the music he was making at the time was like 2005 was like completely crazy like break call which is just this ridiculous music you can’t dance to it like you see people just you know room full of people on ketamine and just falling over to it, you can’t dance it. So like- It’s really fast, or just really hard? Well, both, and also arithmical, and insane, and just impossible to follow, deliberately like obtuse music.

1:02:15 And so, but he was making that kind of stuff, and I’m like, well Jesus, if you can make that, I’m sure you can make dead simple, kind of formulaic dance music. So I set out on a mission to try and do that. But like, he’s working on his rig, I’m working on my image and heaps working on hers. There’s other people kind of more on the fringes doing stuff like Onyx Ashanti, who is this guy from San Francisco originally, who now lives in Berlin, who’s built like this 3D printed head mounted like wrist mounted sort of thing that he’s got these controllers where he like senses movements and he’s blowing into this thing and he’s working with his fingers and like all of his movement is going into he’s fucking crazy, but God bless him. He’s a genius. Would you do that stuff? I would love to I mean, this is like, you know, I’m so glad that people like him exist because he’s issued any kind of mainstream path. He’s like, I’m a creative individual with the ability to be a maker, to be a designer, to be a tester, to be an iterator, to be like a force of creativity and manufacture. And he’s like, well, I’m going to iterate and iterate and iterate and build different versions of this thing and try and get it right. And the it that he’s trying to get right is something which he’s had in his head for years. So I associate people would like people like him more than I do with like you know David guess or Steve Aoki who’s like all Steve Aoki’s done is kind of shout over a DJ

1:03:34 Set and then and then jump into like a rubber dinghy and go but fair enough like it gets paid for making a crowd go crazy and he does it well but it doesn’t interest me it’s not my it’s not my focus nor does what Razzell does interest me particularly because it’s not he’s done it like it’s he’s a he’s He’s a genius. You seem like you get bored easy. You talk about Radiohead reinventing themselves. I don’t think you have to try to reinvent yourself. I think you have no choice because you seem like you get bored.

1:04:09 Yeah, someone said, one of my friends said to me that I move on before anyone else has had a chance to understand what it was I was doing before. Some of those creative people are like that though. Yeah, I guess. I think you find some… Oh, there’s so many examples of people who…

1:04:21 Well, David Bowie, for example. For example, not that I could compare myself to David Bowie, but like, yeah, like deliberately changing what he was, because he’s bored of what he was doing. He’s turned on by something new now. You know, it’s not, you know. Should you just follow your heart the whole way through life that it would lead you the right way?

1:04:38 Yeah. All the most interesting people there. Go. All of us. Am I allowed to say that you used to be a banker?

1:04:43 Am I allowed to say that on air? Yeah. We just put our new website up and I was trying to write my bio and I was like, Brian, Brian moved to London and was in the financial industry. And I was like, I wrote Brian moved to London 12 years ago to be the greatest greedy banker that ever lived. And that’s what I did.

1:04:59 That’s what I tried to do, but that was years ago. I’m changed now. Yeah. You followed your heart at the time and you follow it now. I’m trying.

1:05:06 Thanks to the Bulletproof guys. Yeah. When was the last time you performed? And when are you performing next? Because you seem to really enjoy performing, like you seem to really like connect with your audience and it’s like part comedy and I don’t know, you seem to be really living in the moment when you’re on stage.

1:05:21 Yeah, well I’ve got a tour coming up next year because I’m just trying to finish off my album at the moment and it’s very different to what I’ve been doing for like its songs mostly it’s a five part album so it’s not a double album it’s like a five part album but they’re all like little EPs, each one is a little project because I was just kind of trying to make like I you know just stand in front of all this technology and I’m like right what am I gonna do do something and see where it leads me and then I just sort Instead of, which is what I always wanted to do, really, I always wanted to have this tech to allow me to just do stuff and not know what I was gonna do because that for me is the most fun. I love doing that in front of people and having them involved in the creative process as much as possible, it’s just that, that interests me, that’s really fun.

1:06:06 And so yeah, there’s like five different projects which I didn’t mean to be the exact projects they are. Like one’s a kind of Ibiza, I guess, maybe I was inspired by like, you know, getting married in Ibiza, maybe, maybe just thinking about it and stuff like that. but like it’s very kind of chilled and boleric. Do you sing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:06:27 It’s like, it’s sort of boleric house mostly, but not house kind of like bumped it, bumped it. It’s all very kind of more on the- Is the whole album with your mouth? No. So, okay. There’s- So you’ve managed to get the ideas from your head into beats with using actual- Yeah, like all of the, all of, so there’s a boleric one, there’s a balls to the wall dance music one, which is fucking nuts.

1:06:48 There’s one which is like a sort of more angular, twisted kind of electronic kind of thing. There’s one which is like just songs, like singer-songwriter stuff, but some of the production on that’s really ambitious, some of it’s more stripped back. And then there’s another one. What is the other one? Oh yeah, the other one is this kind of crazy sort of psychedelic, futuristic space journey thing which turns into 90s hip-hop and then turns into like a sort of techno.

1:07:13 It doesn’t make sense. But like all of these things can be listened to in a particular situation in one go, but you couldn’t just belch in front of a million people. But like, you know, you wouldn’t necessarily listen to the whole two hours of music in the same stretch unless you really wanted to. But I kind of figured that if you’re gonna make music, if you’re gonna release music as product, you know, or even as art, like, it’s there for consumption, as in, not like to make money off it, although it helps to kind of define your audience.

1:07:47 But like, it helps to group things in such a way that they can be listened to in one sitting. Where like, I think my career has suffered slightly because no one has known what they were coming to see until they came to see it. And maybe they’ve only seen one video of me on YouTube about that kitchen thing, so they come thinking, oh, well this will be sort of an hour of funny beatbox things. And then I do balls to the wall dance music for an hour and they’re like, well, that wasn’t what I expected.

1:08:11 I don’t really like dance music. I didn’t really enjoy that. Some people who’ve seen just my kitchen thing or a couple of other videos, just the comedy ones, will come and see me do a set where it’s standing with me, it’s 10 o’clock at night, everyone’s drunk, I do balls-of-the-wall dance music, but they happen to love balls-of-the-wall dance music and they’re like, that was fucking great. Some people who have only seen me do balls-of-the-wall dance music videos and then they come along and they have a great time, but maybe they miss the comedy stuff slightly, but maybe I do do some.

1:08:37 So there’s always been a few people at every gig who have been like, well, I didn’t quite get what I wanted. That’s what good artists should do though, a good artist should make you uncomfortable. I guess so, but now I’ve started leaving the beatbox till the end because that’s what most people have come for anyway. So that’s my uncle, and then people that have come for that leave happy, and I like that better because then I haven’t started out being like, well this is what defined me originally and this is what I’ve moved on to.

1:09:00 You kind of start with the show that I want to do and then at the end I sort of do the thing which is more stripped back and it’s more powerful that way, I like it, it’s fun that way. good really good good feeling but like and it’s always live when you do it like when you perform it’s always live yeah like I don’t start with any samples I guess that’s maybe what makes me unique but I mean god there’s people like dub FX as well who is doing really well in Eastern Europe like really well like he’s huge in Eastern Europe and he’s starting to break another place as well he’s from Australia and he lived here for a while but he’s kind of on this very kind of spiritual tip of you know kind of you know eyes open progressive kind of worldview kind of thing writing lyrics writing songs he doesn’t improvise. He does the same songs every night but they’re brilliant songs and you know he makes albums and stuff like that and I’m more trying to get towards that side of things. People know what they’re going to see. Not that they necessarily know what they’re gonna see but when they get there it’s better to the point where it’s not me trying to use bits of other people’s technology to try and do something like dance music or doing comedy to try to do comedy to people who are standing up which never really worked. I do comedy to people who while sitting down, like if there’s seats in the room, then I do comedy, if they’re standing up,

1:10:13 Maybe I’ll drop a couple of stupid gags, but it’s not, it’s not a comedy set. If it’s- So you’re learning your craft though, you’re not just like stubborn and like, I’m gonna do this, you’re like, okay. You’re in the moment, like as you said, you assess the situation. Yeah, it’s just about judging it. I mean, like I’ve always been one to sort of judge things in the moment, because that’s just how I like it.

1:10:30 I mean, I’m inspired by people like Reggie Watts, for example, who’s like a genius. And he’s on a kind of like sort of psychedelic tip, I guess, on the sort of, I mean, he’s not exclusively that, but the journeys that he goes on are very kind of, you know, introverted sort of ramblings of art-a-genius, where he just kind of drifts from character to character, goes from social commentary to sort of character playing to things that you can’t quite define that are mixtures of things put together, and he’s got these set pieces that he uses which you couldn’t really define, you could write essays on the stuff he does, it’s brilliant. And he’s now re-breaking in America, and he does a, so he’s like a looper who was doing looping when I was doing it. Jamie Liddell is a looper who was doing stuff before I was doing it. He doesn’t loop that much anymore as a raison d’etre. He now more does kind of soul singing. He’s kind of like a sort of white-out green kind of thing. But like…

1:11:19 Is the world, is the world over-looped right now? Are there too many loopers? No, there’s not enough. Joe Driscoll? Joe Driscoll is another one. There’s loads of people and there’s loads of like sort of less well-known people doing, doing looping. There’s a looping machine that’s just come out which is the best one that’s ever come out it’s still not great and mine is better but it’s that’s gonna open up doors because people as soon as you have the tools to do something with people can start doing interesting things and that’s a live real-time looper yep all the stuff you’re talking all the tech okay like I don’t yeah I don’t use samples at all at all so I start with nothing I always even when there’s things which I do know I’m gonna do they always turn up different every time because I’m not sure how I’m gonna do it and I get a different feeling when I’m doing something about what I feel like doing a more down-tempo version of this song. Have you seen that kit, I forget what it’s called, but you can plug it into, you plug it into your computer and you plug it into like a lemon and an apple or something. You can make anything a controller. That was pretty cool. You can rig up their stairs and stuff like that.

1:12:21 Have you seen that thing that, um, what’s his name? That Raffa Guy, Flow writer, he’s brought out this laser. I thought that was a joke. But I saw it like they brought that out like three years ago and somehow the company must have got a lot of VC funding because some rich idiot from Silicon Valley is probably gone. That’s a great idea made a ridiculous coke decision and decided that like this laser device needs to have like like like you know Brit take it to a party. Anyone can use it. He probably bought one like had some party and like you know managed to get off of some girl because she was like playing with it and like decided that everyone should have one and so like Flo Rida’s done this ridiculous video. That is the saddest thing ever. And then Deadmau5 threw it out of a window and videoed it and then you know the guys running it have been like okay well let’s get back at him and they’ve done this video where they’ve taken Deadmau5’s likeness and have you seen the shit? No. And the slogan is like so simple only even a mouse could play it and he’s suing it’s just fucking dead mouse gets himself into some situations you hear that thing that happened to him in Vegas he and some really really really rich guy offered him 250 grand to play living on a prayer in his set and their mouse was like worth 250 grand all right I was like the owner of the casino said hey this really the rich guy wants you to play.

1:13:48 He says he’s gonna give you 250 grand. Apparently it was a serious offer. Deadmau5 has gone and done it. He’s gone to the rich guy. The guy’s bouncers were like, fuck off.

1:13:57 And so, like, William Morris, you know, who are the, Deadmau5’s agent, are now suing this dude for 250 grand. You’re in the casino because he’s the one that told him. Or the guy that said he was there. Everyone’s suing each other, but it’s just this amazing, and there’s video of it live as well. I don’t know, like, I find that funny.

1:14:16 What do you think a dead mouse is brilliant as he helped the whole he gets hate as well for the same reasons I’ve like we’ll look what they can do these days. He did that like You know people can say that he’s like super novelty People could say that well the music isn’t that good or they could say that like there’s nothing I innovative about it No, it’s like like, you know, I mean it’s cliche to say but like his earlier work He did this thing called project 56 which was before he was like really well known. It was this kind of collection of experiments I guess and all of them were brilliant forward-thinking little experiments in what was possible with electronic music not that any of them were like really inventive but they were just little sketches of ideas and nothing more really no songs or anything but it’s brilliant it’s really good I mean it’s hard to know what to do with it that’s why it’s like you call it project I guess rather than anything else but like you know there’s a track on there called Squirrels and it’s just him going a factor squirrel on my ass, a factor squirrel on my ass.

1:15:18 I don’t know, he’s a joker, he’s a ridiculous, he’s a fool but he’s in a sense, I’m not saying he’s a fool, I mean he’s like, you know, he’s a geezer, he’s like, he’s a good love and he was, what is he, he was a web developer I think, like a graphics guy and super creative, never thought music was going to take off for him but suddenly it did and he was like well fuck it, I’m going to run with it. something like it was just an internet game and made a song about water Warcraft changed the lyrics to about females and then he made it and then he’s millionaire you just got to run with it I was lucky in a sense that I was in the right place at the right time where YouTube was just coming up YouTube was coming out beatbox was new and seemed superhuman which it doesn’t seem now because there’s kids doing on every x-factor in the world and I was young and hungry for success. I had lots of free time. I was at university. You know, am I in as desirable a situation now in terms of the ability to sort of, I mean I guess I am.

1:16:19 I saved up loads of money to spend on making software. So I guess I’ve always tried to engineer the circumstances to get the kind of opportunities that I wanted to do. But I think I’m going to have to find some, like, I don’t think VC funding would work for me, but probably a Kickstarter project to try and sort of make a product of what I’m doing. Do you want to start a technology company? Is that your next move or is that- Well, that’s a huge thing to try and do.

1:16:44 That’s what you’re doing, right? I’m kind of running a software company at the moment, which is I’ve got like three coders working for me and I’m spending the amount that a software company would spend on R&D, which is fucking insane considering I’m the only user. So I will want to see some remuneration for this at some point very soon and I’m I’m gonna, the trouble with Kickstarter projects and stuff like that is that actually with Kickstarter specifically, if you’re not the coder involved, you can’t do the project.

1:17:07 So there’s others like Indiegogo and stuff like that where you don’t even have to reach your target so they’re much more laissez-faire in terms of their rules. But I think I’ll do that and I’ll offer a product and I’ll have a goal in sight and which will be a kind of very, very reduced version of what I’ve got. But it’s a huge undertaking to make a piece of production-ready, like release-ready software. but you would sell this to the top like elite professionals or would you want to sell this to anybody?

1:17:32 No, that’d be a testing phase that I’d do anyway with the current system. But just to sort of, I mean, yeah, I suppose as a result of the sort of PR strategy of selling what I’ve done, I would do that. I’d make sure that it wasn’t just me that was the only proponent of it. You should do equity crowdfunding. That’s the latest thing.

1:17:49 We just had Max Kaiser in here from Russia today. Well, they’ve just relaxed the rules, haven’t they? Yeah, well, in the UK you can do it. Yeah, so you do a Kickstarter, but they get shares in your company And they also fund it. And then you give away 10% of your company and that.

1:18:00 They’ve had that on Kickstarter for a while, where you can nominally, I suppose, be the, you know, they say if you give 10,000 pounds, then you can be on the board of directors. So, you know. Okay, I think it’s still illegal in America. There’s a couple weird things, but I know you can’t do it in America. America’s weird.

1:18:12 Yeah, America’s crazy that way. So, for you like next year, the year after that, I mean, I know you don’t sound like the kind of guy that has like these big life goals. You seem like you go wherever you wanna go, but is there like, I wanna sell out Madison Square Garden for three days, or is it like I want to do a strictly comedy show? I don’t know, do you have like weird goals? My goals are on hold for now while I get the text sorted.

1:18:35 Really? And when I get the album finished, I’m not, I’m just looking straight at the road ahead rather than trying to think of the ultimate goal. Because I mean like, I suppose my ultimate goals are these sort of impossible unreachable dreams which are largely to do with, well, partly to do with things, to do with luck. But I don’t know, I’m not going to know. Reachable, there’s no such thing as luck. I don’t believe in that. Yeah. Well, yeah. No, I hate the idea of gambling I think it’s I wouldn’t try and stop people from doing it, but There’s something icky about the idea that there is luck because there isn’t Mathematically, there isn’t yeah. Well, yeah coincidence is a sort of emergent property of chaos You know, it’s you it’s your subjective view of two coherent events It’s the perception of coherence in an assistant, you perceive order where there isn’t any.

1:19:30 So where people see luck, it’s a misnomer, but you make your own luck in the sense that you have to engineer the circumstances to get yourself lucky. So that’s what engineer the circumstances to get yourself lucky, it sounds like dating tips. So you can kind of, I mean right now, there’s a few aphorisms that I like to sort of try and live by at the moment, which are, I guess I’m building a better mousetrap. So you heard that, like build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

1:19:57 I don’t know who said it, but it’s the idea that like you just have something better and you can go from there. Is that your music or your software? Both, I guess. I suppose there’s just something about just trying to think content first, do good stuff, stuff that’s worthy of promoting or what’s the point you know and and yeah in terms of like having the competitive advantage in the sense of trying to build myself tech which allows me to do my ideas to execute them and like yeah so I suppose for now I mean I’m kind of trying to put aside oh and the other aphorism is like it was Abraham Lincoln said if I had I’ll probably mess up the quote but it’s something that if I had five hours to chop down the tortoise in the forest, I would spend the first three hours sharpening my axe, there you go, which is an amazing phrase, it’s like just prepare, you know, make sure you’re prepared.

1:20:50 So that’s what I’m doing at the moment, I’m trying to make sure I have the tech and make sure I have an album which is of a quality so that I can sort of, and then I’ll start thinking about what I can do with all this stuff and have a kind of asset led. The tech is like a bottleneck for you until you get the tech right, you can’t express what you want to express. Yeah, because I suppose what I have in my head is the idea of, which is what I’ve always had, I suppose, going on stage with no prior idea of what it is I’m going to do and just going for it.

1:21:20 And people like Reggie Watts do that, people like Tim exile do that. There’s not really very many others that do. That’s why you’re motivated because it’s like beatboxing, there’s too many people in it now. When you started, there wasn’t very many that did it. So you’re just following that, the front of the wave kind of thing.

1:21:35 Well, not even. It might seem that way. But it’s more that like, I don’t know, like with some artists or companies perhaps, there’s like a contrivance about the way that they innovate and that they’re just trying, like Phillips, for example, keep kind of making things that aren’t necessarily useful, like that kind of backlight TV thing where they’ve got like a strip of LED around the side of the screen that lights the wall behind the TV in accordance with what’s on the screen.

1:22:00 It’s not useful. But it seems innovative, like, wow. Or maybe some bands kind of want to try and get with it. Like Will.i.am, for example, has always kind of seen what’s on the underground and kind of echoed that and sort of used that in his music and stuff, because he’s not really innovating necessarily, but he’s just being the first to market with a new style. I hate to use business terminology in music, but I can’t think of any other way to this point.

1:22:26 But with me, I think it’s more the case that it’s the same idea that it’s been the whole way through, where I just want to reduce the amount of time and effort and application and thought between conception and realisation of a musical idea. So if there’s something in my head, I want it to be in the world. Does most of your new album come from live performances where you’ve got inspiration? It’s all started on the beard each one, as it’s called. One of the songs in particular is one that I’ve had in my head for like 15 years and I just never got round to recording it but it’s just been going around around my head so I was like well no I’ve got this Beardytron thing maybe I’ll try and do it using that and I’ve got this guitar that can become anything because there’s this kind of guitar effects box I’ve got which can turn each string of your guitar into a different instrument so you can have like a bass and a violin or any different guitar so I just use that one guitar my piece of equipment that I’ve built and just kind of did the whole thing in one two-hour long experimental take.

1:23:34 And then I kind of chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, snip, snip, snip in my laptop. And then I’ve got all the material I need and then it’s just a matter of doing a jigsaw. And that’s how I’ve done most of the tracks. And some of the five EP project things that are on this album are just long pieces of contiguous dance music where I didn’t know what I was going to do and it’s just a kind of journey and I didn’t know what I was going to do and I can change the tempo and re-sample things so they end up as these kind of mulched up, chewed up versions of what I put in the first place and things morph and change.

1:24:06 And then some of them are kind of ideas where it’s been a really convoluted process where I’ll start on the Beidetron and then the idea will kind of sort of blossom and I’ll be like, oh well that could be a song I guess and I kind of start kind of you know spitting lyrics. Like Jay Z has said he does his Rain Man thing where he like paces the floor and just gets the rhythm first. And Imogen Heapwrights in the same way, a lot of people do, it’s where you have like you get the general feeling you want to put across and you let the melody flow from you and then you kind of think, well, what am I trying to say?

1:24:40 And then you find lyrics that fit to it and you’re like, yeah, that’s what I mean. That’s what I meant. And it’s a kind of interesting process of drawing out of you, these kind of poetic ideas and, you know, rather than contriving it by sitting down and writing the way Rihanna will write a song. We’ll say Rihanna doesn’t write shit, but like her team will sit there and go, right, what is popular right now? Text messages.

1:25:01 Everyone loves text messages. Let’s do a song about text messages. You know, so like rather than kind of trying to, I mean, that’s the other thing that I’m trying to do as well is to try and make sure that I don’t contrive anything. And I think I’ve been guilty of that in the past. Well, I’ve done that as a raison d’etre.

1:25:15 I was like, my last album was completely novelty and it was done, every song was a project in the sense that it was like, I sat there, it was me and Tom Middleton and we sat there and tried to sort of think, well, what should we do now? I know, and then we write this kind of manifesto of what this song is going to be. And then we do it. And it would be something stupid like, you know, we’ll mix Bollywood with Eastern European vibes and put it to dubstep and then do it.

1:25:42 And it just made this kind of throw away sort of novelty album, which I don’t like anymore. Some people still really like it, that’s great. It didn’t do incredibly well, would it be so, like 11,000 copies or something like that? Which like, that’s a big number of things, generally, like of beans, that would be like a big tub of beans. But like it’s not, it’s not amazing in the, it’s not gonna, it’s not a platinum record, but like I don’t like it anymore because of that novelty value and this, this new album I’ve done has no novelty tracks on it, there’s no like joke tracks.

1:26:07 Because, you know, I’ve been writing songs since I was five, so I’ve got no interest in being a novelty artist. And that’s another thing, like when I started this whole thing, beatbox has always seemed to me to be very novelty. Even Razzell doing what he does, making these big kind of speeches on beatbox interviews he’s done being like, look, it’s got to be from the heart. And yeah, what he does is from the heart, but there is an inherent novelty value in beatboxing because it’s a performance art and it’s a performance art which you can do anything with. So I think beatbox as a constituent is interesting. It’s like, you You know, it’s a bit like being a chef, but restricting yourself to chicken.

1:26:46 I’m a chicken chef. That’s what I do. I make things with chicken. No, no herbs, no spices. Just the best chicken I can find.

1:26:51 I let the meat speak for itself. No, we don’t cook it. You just eat it all. You just, you have to capture it yourself. It’s a farm.

1:26:58 I run a farm. But you can come and eat my chickens. Don’t use any, don’t kill them first. You have a love-hate relationship with beatbox, definitely. I think it’s nice as a constituent.

1:27:05 So it’s like, I like the idea of being a cook who is, like it feels like stone soup. You know that old story, it’s like a wolf tries to eat an old woman and the woman is like, wait, don’t eat me, I’m going to make the best soup in the world. Is that how the story starts? No. No, it isn’t. There’s no wolves, are there? I think the fact that we don’t have anything to make soup and then someone’s like, I’m going to make stone soup and they’re like, what? And then the kid makes a stone soup and it’s like, oh, we Really use and then someone’s like I’ve got some celery and then doesn’t yeah I think there’s several permutations of the story ones like a wolf trying to be an odd woman The other ones like a sort of I don’t know the evil salesman comes to the house or something And he’s like trying to sell them the stone and it’s like and then that that one’s guarding against salesman There’s another one guarding against like wolves I don’t know but it’s it’s about the idea that like yeah So the story is like it’s not the stone that makes the soup is all the other ancillary ingredients Yeah, so like I think the beatbox is interesting because it enables your ideas to flow freely I don’t think it’s interesting for any other reason I mean the mouth and the face are interesting in the fact that you can make This vast array of noises, but I don’t think you should be like well Let’s see what I can make with my I mean I was like that for a while for a good long while I was like well

1:28:21 Let’s make my entire career about what I can do with my mouth I’m just being like well, that’s not as a novelty career That’s like well, that’s like freerunning would be boring if I only did it in the same place every time I did it Right, what can I do with Sainsby’s car park? Yeah, exactly. So eventually there is limited creativity but you would get bored and be like I could probably come up with something in a year I’ll find one more thing they don’t take me two years to find one more thing so that whereas my joy is going to new environments every time I’ve got new canvas to paint on every single time whereas with beatboxing I’m sure that’s why you get obsessed with the amount of turns in the air you can do and stuff like that and there’s more about the distances you can jump in there it’s a mixture of everything it’s whatever I wake up and feel like doing that day Jeremy some days you appreciate other things more than that but it’s but for me if I wasn’t able to go to new environments and go on different walls and things it would get boring so quickly like so it’s with that beatboxing is you’ve got the same set you’ve got to be enthused about what you do if you’re not enthused about what you do yeah it’s why would anyone else be enthused about what you do it’s obvious but I can get so much out of I can train on my own and come out of it feeling great whereas with beatboxing maybe at the start you do it on your

1:29:24 Own in the bathroom or something you enjoy that but eventually if the correct if you know they’re very similar in that respect like they’re things which you do on your own which are kind of frowned upon as like well Well they were, you know, actually freerunning and beatboxing came into the public sphere at roughly the same time, like they were both things which were seen as like irritating or dangerous or something. Beatboxing was a bit dangerous, but you know what I mean, it’s on the fringes. And then finally now it’s kind of accepted as like a good vent for creativity and energy and stuff like that.

1:29:55 There’s kids, there was a guy, Gavin Tite is his name, and he’s like a beatboxing priest And he runs, or ran, the biggest beatboxing forum site in the world. And he says he saved lives using beatboxing, because there’s kids who have had nothing else in their lives, and the community, the beatbook community has saved them. But they can sit at home in the projects, whatever, and then do this. If it’s a force of positivity, it gives kids something to do, like, in that sense, it’s similar to free running.

1:30:28 That’s true. I hit you with a London Real question, which is where we usually finish things up, which is the advice question. You could probably ask him, cause you know this question, right? I’ll ask it. Yeah, you go for it.

1:30:36 All right, if you can make a phone call to the 20 year old, Darren Foreman, and give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him? I’m not good with non-questions. I’m not good with questions which are impossible. Tell yourself to work on him. Okay, what was the 20 year old dad doing?

1:31:00 What was the 20 year old dad doing at that time then? I can’t seem to, I can’t engage with the question because there’s no useless exercise. Well, because you never know, do you? If I’d given myself one piece of advice, maybe my life wouldn’t have taken the route it was taking. If I’d have said to myself, don’t go the software route, it’s incredibly expensive, and then you have to try and form a software company, then I don’t know what’s gonna come of this.

1:31:26 Like, this might be brilliant. I could end up forming a software company that would do really well, or I could get bought out by one of the larger software companies. I could say to myself, Try and make more of an art form out of beatboxing, I don’t know whether that would work. I could say to myself, focus on looping, I could say to myself, form a band, like any of these kind of things I sometimes think, well, should I have done this? I don’t know.

1:31:48 So I don’t know what advice I give to myself. I genuinely have no idea. Good, that’s an answer in itself. Yeah, how would you know what’s appropriate advice to give yourself? I get a range of answers.

1:31:57 Some people say what you said, some people said I wouldn’t change anything or I wouldn’t be here. Some people always say very things you would expect, like, you know, don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. That’s drugs or something. Yeah, or just, you know, most people’s younger selves are so stressed about the things. I think I’d say smoke less weed.

1:32:12 Really? Okay. Really. Well, because that’s… You’re a musician.

1:32:17 Are drugs an integral part of the creative process in your mind? Yeah, did they help you with that? No, but I thought they did. Weed didn’t help. Okay.

1:32:24 No, I mean, I don’t think, like, smoking a lot of weed has, like, really inhibited my success or my happiness, but it hasn’t helped like I it’s it’s a means of release an unhealthy means of release because It’s a psychotropic substance and it’s not It’s not that helpful. I mean, I don’t know I think that like ecstasy is brilliant like well not ecstasy necessarily MDMA is brilliant Yeah, if you use it once Maybe twice maybe whenever you need a little top-up of a reminder of how happy you can be of the fact that happiness is just a reaction to a certain hormone being released into its serotonin reuptake in your neurons and it gives you this feeling of happiness and it directs that feeling of happiness at whatever you look at. That’s the best glass I’ve ever seen, man.

1:33:18 That’s brilliant. That means that you can affect your state of mind by pure force of ability. And then it’s all perception. It’s all perception. So I think MDMA is great, but you should take it once just to show yourself.

1:33:30 I got out of depression when I was a teenager by trying ecstasy and being like, holy shit, I was depressed. I had no idea. I was like, this is how happy I could be. Fucking brilliant. I need to change my life.

1:33:43 And I made those decisions. They’re using it for PTSD guys coming back from the wars. I’ve heard about Joe Rogan. The guy was on it. Yeah.

1:33:51 We had Rick Doblin here as well. Oh, did you? Yeah. And they do three sessions. of I mean prescribed depression but that’s different than like an MDMA they do like an MDMA therapy session where they have a therapist they give the MDMA to the soldier they talk to him for the next four hours they come back three weeks later and they do like three sessions and then that’s usually all really trying to develop it they spent years he said they spent like four years just trying to get some legally trying to follow the legal routes yeah to get it in America as like actual scientific practices and it took him four years to get it from Canada there legally so they could do the experiments with it so they can develop it to be used in hospitals and things as an actual service.

1:34:27 But they’re doing it now. And it’s like against the pharmaceutical industry that says, here’s a drug you have to take the rest of your life with this MDMA studies, they’re like, you’re going to do it three times and then you’re going to move on. Like you said, a periodic… It has hugely beneficial effects on people with depression or anxiety and stuff like that. What about mushrooms as well?

1:34:42 Yeah. Because it’s a similar thing that the scientists have been in that, how it’s people like 95% of people that took it said it was in the top five most important experiences of their life. Yeah. drug, as in I think the MDMA shows these PTSD guys, it lets them forgive themselves, shows them that they can be happy. You can have a religious experience on MDMA, which is better than a religious experience, well I’d say better than a religious experience.

1:35:05 It’s like, it supersedes that in the sense, not supersedes is the wrong word, it’s a different category of realisation, like they did that drugs live programme recently, did you guys see that shit? It was like on Channel 4 and it was like Peter Sisson’s or whatever, like hosting his Welcome to Drives Live. People are going to take drugs, be warned, keep your children in bed, and you know, observe people under drugs. Some like B-list celebrities just like on pills being like, you know, I feel brilliant.

1:35:33 Add to your TV, this is on TV, I’m going to miss that. And it was like, you know, they had it was all like for medical purposes or whatever. That’s great. But it was, yeah, it caused this big Twitter storm of people, this swarm of indifference being like, well, this is bullshit. But it was interesting because they had like a vicar on there, like a female vicar who was like, doesn’t know that she was female, just a vicar.

1:35:55 And yeah, she was asked about it as she was hired. They were like, well, and afterwards I think, they were like, do you have a religious experience? What did she take? Existee. And they were like, did you have a religious experience?

1:36:10 Did you meet God? She’s like, no. Okay. But that was brilliant. So you think it can be useful, but periodically?

1:36:17 I mean, you must see people in clubs that use it every weekend. Any drug can be misused. Most drugs are a poison in the wrong dosage. All drugs are a poison in the wrong dosage. Everything is a poison in the wrong dosage.

1:36:29 A bit of iron’s great. Drop an anvil on someone. It’s not too good.

1:36:34 So yeah, but maybe smoke less weed, I’d say, is my form of self. It doesn’t increase your productivity. It just makes you dopey, and it doesn’t really… Time was, I’d have a deadline and be like, right, I really need to be creative. I’ll smoke some weed and I’ll get the job done better and quicker and more creatively.

1:36:53 And I’d listen to, and I’ve had this conversation with loads of people where they’re like, yeah, no, it’s always the same shit, you wake up the next day and you’ve like changed one knob for an hour and it hasn’t helped at all. Do you think that could be the English weed though, because I swear in California and L.A. that some of the most productive people, they smoke constantly. Depends on the person. Graham Hancock was in here and he smoked for 15 years.

1:37:11 Then he gave it up, he was in Alaska. Yeah. Yeah, the guy I was, exactly. Yeah. He actually talked about that for the first time here, like a year ago, and we were just like, whoa.

1:37:19 But he said he’s a better writer since he got off of it. Yeah. You know, he said he wasn’t… He thought he was being more creative, but he really… Like David Bowie in cocaine.

1:37:26 Like, he said some of the things about that period of, like, he was really pleased that when he got clean, he realized he didn’t need the drugs to make the music. But I don’t know, I mean, there’s a sense in which if you spin yourself out to that extent and widen your horizons using mind-expanding drugs, and you widen your range of experience and understanding using these kind of devices, if you want to call them that, then you can have that sort of mental landscape there to access whenever you want it, which is the same thing I was talking about, access to you, where you have those experiences and then you know that those experiences are possible, so then you know how much more happy you can be with acid. When you get the message hang up the phone, Terrence McKenna said, when you get the message hang up the phone, like, you know what I mean, take them, get the message, do it.

1:38:08 I haven’t heard that quote. I listen to Terrence all the time. Maybe it wasn’t Terrence, but it was a good one. It could, but alright, I was going to say… That’s better than what’s his name, the guy from the 60s who was insane and damaging and urged people to turn on tuning and jump out.

1:38:21 Dennis Leary. Yeah, he was like, just keep taking it. It’s fine. Stay on the phone. That was a crazy time, 60s.

1:38:27 Alright, I’m just going to finish out this in the next question. No, not Dennis Leary. Dennis Leary, the guy that hate Bill Hicks. Timothy Leary. Dennis Leary.

1:38:33 Last bit of advice question. What’s the best advice you’ve received ever stop it. You make it worse Stop what whatever it is. Stop it. You make it worse Okay, it’s always good advice like it’s good advice, you know Which is that’s what we’re talking about. Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about with the drug stuff. Yeah, like, you know, it’s fine. Leave it It’s fine Put it down. Yeah, I don’t know. I have a tendency to be kind of obsessive and And anxious and neurotic so I think I mean, I’m Jewish, what are you gonna do?

1:39:05 So it’s like, you know, stop it. Like, it’s, you know, there’s a. Oh, it’s never finished, in a way. Ah, yeah, there’s a brilliant Zen quote, which is,

1:39:18 I’m gonna fuck this up as well. Nothing is ever perfect. Nothing is ever finished, and there’s a third thing as well. Okay. Whatever it is.

1:39:26 Do you have a problem walking away from a piece of work? Yeah, yeah, perfectionism is a curse if you let it be. I suppose you have to exercise judgment about knowing when something is finished. That’s kind of why I’ve been making all this technology so I don’t, so you’re making everything real time, you don’t have the option to go back and fiddle. Because it’s, you know, especially like a piece of art, you can drive yourself crazy trying to perfect something where actually the imperfections are what’s brilliant.

1:39:50 And that’s part of sort of Japanese like artistic theory as well. I think aim for like 95% satisfaction and then move on to something else and let it go. no art is ever finished it’s just left. Yeah a mix is never finished merely abandoned. Isn’t Dre still working on that album the relapse album like it’s been like 10 or 15 years and he just won’t miss this album that’s coming out isn’t it? Is it out now? I saw it on iTunes it might be pre-order alright last bit of that question is to the 20 year old listening now on iTunes or on YouTube who wants to be like you someday or wants to get in the music industry What do you tell them?

1:40:31 What’s your advice to them? Get a job? No, I don’t know. Don’t expect the music industry to exist. But firstly, don’t expect it to exist at all in five years’ time in the state that it currently is at the moment.

1:40:41 It’s in a huge state of flux. Because the music industry classically was built around, I say classically, like it’s been a thing. Like in the 20s, records became big business. They remained big business. All the different formats that came out were big business.

1:40:59 And now there is no such thing as physical media. The bottom is dropping out of DVD sales. It’s completely disappeared in physical formats, really, apart from sort of collector’s edition vinyl and stuff like that. People are releasing albums on USB keys with extra content on them because it’s the only way to sell any kind of physical device, or medium, or whatever. You know, the whole industry that was hinged around those barriers to entry, with this whole hierarchy of administration and sort of means of production about vinyl and then CDs and then tape, but with things that are hard to produce, that doesn’t exist anymore. So music is back to being this kind of ephemeral thing. So in that sense, don’t expect there to be a music industry. Expect to have to fight for your ability to earn off it. Expect it to be a hobby. Work harder than you would ever think you need to. Don’t discount luck in the sense that if you happen to chance upon something that gets big or gets you recognition, you need to pounce on that and make the most that you can out of it. I’m not advocating being like a one hit wonder or anything, but sometimes you have no choice. Sometimes you just have to work with what you’ve got and and then build from there, and that’s a mission.

1:42:24 I’m still learning about how to navigate this industry. It’s a weird industry, and it’s full of shit. What was it? Hunter S. Thompson said, the music industry is a shallow money trench where wolves run free, good men die like dogs, I think is the quote.

1:42:39 And then he’s like, there’s also a negative side. So like, yeah. And it’s worse now than it was when he was doing it, in a sense. Like, there’s a Zapper quote where, you know, it’s like an interview where he’s talking the music industry as it stands in the late 70s early 80s and he’s like well in the late 60s no one knew what all this music these crazy kids were listening to was and so the record execs were like well hey these guys are doing well on their local scene give them a million dollars see what happens well that seemed to work great then by the late 70s you know the the kids who had been you know working as office juniors when youth culture was reaching a sort of maturation point thought they knew what was cool and they knew what dictated coolness so they started meddling. It’s the same thing that happened in the sort of viral marketing industry in the sort of mid-2000s where you saw the clients meddling where you, I mean this is an experience as I’ve had where you know I’ve done some advertising stuff and like it just gets icky because people are trying to, it’s a cluster of people, everyone’s trying to affect what the outcome is going to be and really if you’re going to make good art or that advertising can never genuinely be good art because it’s by necessity manipulative and an evil use of the magical powers.

1:44:08 I think there’s a pure way to do it but I think 99% of it is obvious. But if you’re going to make good art it needs to be one person’s idea or at least a group of people’s idea that work well as a unit. You can’t throw a team together and expect it to work, so that’s why you get shit up. One of the reasons you get shit up. Will you make money off your new album, or is it just something you do for your own creative process to stay relevant, or is it hard to make money off?

1:44:33 Am I making a buzzer? Am I going to make money off your new album? No, not really. I mean, even if it sells millions of copies, you still won’t make that much money. You make money off publishing now, because people have always made money off publishing, because radio plays and syncs and stuff, if you get something synced to a film or something like that, which is something I’ve had in the past, that can get you some money.

1:44:54 But in terms of record sales, iTunes gives you a very small percentage, Spotify gives you next to nothing, so it’s well known now that selling these doesn’t get me. Expect to make your money out of live income, I think, is one thing you have to have a live show. I mean, there’s alternative models where your YouTube channel can earn you money, it can earn you enough to make a living, you can have sort of, there’s a new thing called Patreon, and I don’t know if it’s the only site like it, but it’s the only one I’ve seen, but there’s probably others, where it’s a bit like Kickstarter, where it’s a crowdfunding model, but it’s an ongoing crowdfunding model where you can have, you become a patron of a particular producer of content, so you could do any video you upload.

1:45:36 I’m thinking of getting involved with it actually for a project I’m doing, which is this kind of crazy sort of magazine show nonsense using all this tech and all these stupid ideas with people I work with and stuff just to make a kind of just a crazy show but like how do we fund this thing like you know we can’t charge entry on the door because we want to do it in a small studio environment so like yeah you either get sponsors or you get a crowdfunding model so just be prepared to be innovative I suppose is the sort of very trite way of of putting the standard piece of advice it’s given to people wanting to be in the music industry these days it’s an industry in a state of flux it may not even exist five years time. Yeah, that’s a damn truth. That’s good advice. That’s good advice. Guys, we probably talked for hours. Tim, did I miss anything? Or did I even ask? No, it was good.

1:46:15 Great talk. It’s kind of like kind of psychedelic being here and just like listening to all this stuff, right? It’s so much to learn from every guest. I don’t think I’ve ever said so many words in the space of an hour. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, I know. It’s interesting to see like what goes on in your mind. Your creative process must be crazy. I mean, you seem like the kind of guy that wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, you know, for a song.

1:46:35 Yeah, sleeping can be difficult. I believe you. How do people get a hold of you? You’re on Twitter. How do people buy your album when it comes out?

1:46:43 You can find my album on the internet. I’m available on the internet. Okay, well said. It’s always weird when people are like, you can find me. That’s not even a thing anymore, is it?

1:46:53 Yeah, Google and you’re done. Just ask your phone. Find me Beardyman Man. Certainly. You never really went through Beardyman Man, is it?

1:47:00 Why you’re called that? And do you ever shave? There’s no story. I had a beard. Um, my friend was like, what do you want to be on this flyer?

1:47:07 And then I got a text message from this other friend saying like, Oi, beardy man, which was a thing that he called me at the time. So I was like, uh, baby man. But it turned out to be like every fly ever, which was possibly a mistake because I don’t really have a beard. So, but you have, but you’re happy with the handle. No, it’s shit.

1:47:20 But it’s, it’s memorable though. It is. But it’s kind of trace descriptions breach because it’s, you know, people are like, what are you doing? Why don’t you have a beard, man? I’m like, why don’t your mom have a beard?

1:47:29 Fuck you. So when you first hear it, you’re like, what the hell? But after you hear it about 10 times, you’re like, oh, yeah. It sounds like a thing that already exists, which is why it’s like, you know, the Hobnobs were like really new. They’re only like 15 years old or something like that.

1:47:43 Everyone has seen the Hobnobs have been around since like, you know, hundreds of years of like biscuit. Hobnobs, like surely grandmothers used to make them themselves. No, because it just sounds like an old sounding name. Yeah. Interesting.

1:47:53 Yeah. All right. There we go. Um, Tim, what’s going on with you? Are you, you’re still going to be flow, flow show?

1:47:58 Yeah, I do the flow thing. I just did a commercial with Nike. We were working on a movie in the new year. Movie? Yeah, it’s a new Frankenstein thing.

1:48:07 Are you doing like action in the movie? Yeah, like a chase sequence. Okay. But I don’t think I can actually… I’ve signed some ideas.

1:48:13 I’ve signed some ideas. Yeah, awesome. It’s cool. I’m not doubling anyone, so I don’t mind going down that route. I’m actually kind of a character that’s chasing the main guys and the thing.

1:48:23 So I’m a tumbler circus guy chasing them. Okay. That’s it, yeah. And you’re doing more yoga? Are we going to get you in the ayahuasca?

1:48:30 Yeah, yeah. I still need to do my Oscar a lot of things pushing me in that direction and I just haven’t I don’t know. I’ve got projects I want to work. I just want to promote fruit and vegetables to kids That’s the thing next year. That is the the goal fruit and vegetable to kids. That’s it. All right. I like it man simplify nature’s candy Yeah, exactly. There’s a certain rapper. It’s Fruit is incredible and people just shun it like it’s nothing. It’s don’t get it. It’s Andrew. Yeah, like it’s like

1:48:56 That’s dope you don’t need a rapper. Yeah, exactly. That’s right and bananas Fruit and veg get a bad rap. You’re right. People just dismiss me. It’s almost like racism was maybe 50 hundred years ago People like yeah, whatever. I mean it really is it is it’s discrimination. I know it’s pretty bad free the fruit You need to I need to think about that too So anyways, if you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can see all of our faces on the YouTube channel on the real We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook. Yeah, does what’s that?

1:49:25 Dad’s thanks for coming. I know you had deadlines and everything and thanks for coming over here. Thank you. Take this the right way I’m glad you didn’t perform I’ll try and take that the best way. It was yeah on YouTube. You’ve seen a related link To the right of this on YouTube you will see so many choices of performance so watching perform But this is like inside his head, so thanks so much. Thanks for being here. Thanks. Thank you, man Cool, man. It’s about the journey as we say peace to you guys. Thanks.