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Beardyman chats to I Like Music

What can you do with your mouth? A question that one man has more answers to than most others, two years running UK Beatbox champion and facial hair extravaganza...Beardyman. He is currently touring the country with JFB (UK DMC Technics champion) and their blend of beatbox, scratching, freestyling and robot spanking in the live spectacular that is Battlejam.

I Like Music caught up with Beardyman to chat about turning your mouth into a piano, innovative production ideas and waking up in strange T-shirts

"I Like Music because…it is the only thing apart from the moment of orgasm that makes me feel truly happy and at one with the world. " BEARDYMAN

ILM: Firstly I wanted to ask you about Battlejam, an amazing idea. Sampling yourself, the audience and whatever else live, to make new exciting tunes! How did that idea come about?

Beardyman: We just started using Serato - which is Vinyl emulation software. It is being used by a lot of DJs at the moment but we're one of the only ones to utilise the record button. I've been working with John for nearly three years and for a while we were just playing together doing beatbox and scratch stuff but then John got Serato...! I went round to his house and he showed me this thing and we noticed the record button and it just blew our minds! We were doing all this stuff and we didn't know what to call it, so we had to make our own night to be able to play it out anywhere. No one would have booked us to do this crazy, experimental thing.

Neither of us is short of bookings, we are both really busy doing gigs together and apart, but some of the stuff we can't do at other gigs we end up trying out at Battlejam. It has remained an experimental testing ground for new and weird ideas, to see how random we can take our music by improvising on the spot. It's grown into this thing that neither of us expected it to. Plus, even when it doesn't work at least it's funny! And it's not always our fault because the crowd gives us something really weird and off key! Hah!

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Related links:

1. Beardyman - Battlejam
2. International Beatbox Convention 2008 Review