It was very exciting to hear that Beardyman’s high-concept supergroup, the Dream Team, were coming to Brighton. Famous for his beatboxing and looping skills, plus his use of comedy, Beardyman’s name alone has enough weight to sell out big venues. Add to that a couple more UK beatbox champions, a UK slam poetry champion, plus a turntablist, a cellist and a drummer who are all world famous, as well as the promise to improvise the entire concert, and you’ve got a recipe for creativity that is downright intimidating.

The assembled musicians took their places behind the elaborate on-stage setup and the show began with zero buildup, accelerating straight to full speed with Beardyman beatboxing into the mic before stepping aside for a cello break, leading to verses from Dizraeli and Bellatrix, the aforementioned champs. For maximum effect, Beardyman chose to introduce the band at the beginning, rather than end, of the concert: cue some world-class turntablism and an intense drum solo. It was a dizzying start to a concert that would, for the most part, maintain this level of instensity.

Over the next hour the band straddled genres with a wonderful lack of regard for tradition. In many ways, it was not especially what was expected from a Beardyman concert; for the most part it was surprisingly hard and aimed at being dance-friendly. On top of this, most of Beardyman’s equipment crashed during the very first song, leaving him without his traditional rig – meaning that the band had to pick up the slack. Despite this, it was just as frenetic and, frankly, mad as anticipated.

The opening of the concert tended towards grime – which sounds fantastic played on a double-bass, by the way. From here the band started to improvise songs from subjects picked by the audience. For the first, ‘Time Flies When You’re Having Rum’, they chose a reggae feel, and gave the musicians onstage free-reign. The next, ‘Oak Trees and Skyscrapers’, had a more electronic basis, being built on Beardyman’s cascading looped vocals, and featured some excellent verses from Dizraeli. The third improvised song was named ‘Purple Samosa Blues’ and saw Beardyman pick up an electric guitar for some funk and fuzz rhythms.

The band were versatile in the extreme. At times the performance felt like a straight-up Ibiza trance gig, others like a jazz poetry reading. They covered everything from psytrance to funk, from reggae to heavy metal, moving between fully acoustic instrument setups to ambient glitch-hop production with ease – and the truly impressive thing was that they played it all equally well. The whole band were masters of their instruments, and gelled incredibly, reading each other with an almost instinctual clarity. Beardyman seemed to think that the loss of most of his equipment was severely limiting, but that simply wasn’t the case. His band were good enough that they simply stepped into the space and carried the whole show.

Having said that, the first song of the encore, where Beardyman appeared alone on stage looping beatbox and vocal harmonies, did ignite a hunger for more of the man himself. Joined after this by the band, they all played an excellent finale to a concert that had been a dazzling journey through genres, backed up by a pool of exceptional musical talent and creativity. Despite this, it’s impossible not to wonder what it might have been like if Beardyman had had the full use of his rig – and had himself been a little more in the forefront.
Ben Noble

Website: beardyman.co.uk
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