Make Mine A Stubble

“No-one has actually demanded that I play anything from the album yet, which is lucky, ‘cause I can’t be bothered.”

29-year-old Darren Foreman has a point. With a live show based heavily on improvisation and a looping set-up that’d make Steve Jobs’ head spin, technically speaking, Beardyman makes an album every night he steps onto a stage.
“I wanna make new stuff every time I play,” he stresses. “That’s what I’m into really, just sort of seeing what I can do. If people start asking me to do things from the album, I’ll definitely do it, but I’m not going to try and force it down people’s throats.”
I catch some time with Foreman as he makes his way from LA to Coachella, having already packed out a couple of venues in Hollywood, including the legendary Viper Room. “I’m actually beginning to chip away at America,” he tells me, “slowly but surely.”
For those who have yet to sample the zany delights of his recently released debut record, the rather brilliantly-titled I Done A Album, it’s a 20-track joyride through countless genres, taking in impressions, skits and violent enactments of at least two celebrity deaths along the way.
“It’s a pretty silly album,” Foreman admits. “There’s some good tunes on there, but they’re kind of more abstract. It’s not as if I’ve written a bunch of songs about a relationship and I want to play them to people because I need to get it all out!”
While I Done A Album is his first official release, the loudmouth Londoner is quick to point out that the process of making music is nothing new to him.
“I’d done orchestral pieces for orchestras when I was like 11 years old, and I’ve been writing songs since I was five. I’ve done collaborations, I’ve produced bits here and there and done remixes, it’s not as if I haven’t done this kind of stuff, but it was always going to be an interesting challenge to meet people’s expectations whilst still kind of blowing their expectations apart, but doing that without confusing them too much. It was interesting to cram everything onto one record and I probably made it too long, on reflection, but I didn’t wanna not have any drum ‘n bass on there or not have any hip hop.
‘On my next album, I’m just not gonna be arsed,” he dismisses. “I’m not gonna worry about whether it’s got this on it or that on it, it’s just gonna be about making music. I might even do something where there’s no tracks, like Goldie did. Albums are a kind of a relic. There’s no reason why albums should exist in the way they do.”
As if revolutionising a medium of recorded music isn’t enough, Foreman tells me that his immediate goal is cranking his live beatmaking up a notch.
“I’m moving away from beatboxing to be honest, ‘cause I think beatboxing is really boring. I know that a lot of people love it, but I don’t. My shows are going to change markedly. I’m not the kind of person who would deliberately alienate fans because I think that’s stupid, but I do want to change and progress and grow, and I think sometimes you have to be a little bit brutal and you have to stop doing things that some people love in order to progress.
‘In the last year or so, I’ve stopped beatboxing because, for me, it’s a party trick and it has no longevity. I think if you’re an artist you have to be turned on by what you’re doing and if you’re not, you have to be prepared to just be a kind of soulless performer and live a lie. I’m not prepared to do that, that’s not why I got into this.”
If the maverick performer sounds frustrated, it’s probably because he finds himself in an ongoing brawl with technology. An early champion of voice samplers like the Korg Kaoss Pad, Foreman is constantly outgrowing his equipment, so much so that he’s been forced to start developing his own.
“I’m working on software that hopefully will be ready soon and it allows me to do my show better than I’ve ever been able to do it. It’s a live looping program which hopefully will enable me to make music at the speed of thought.
‘Really, I’ve got these insane ideas about how it is that I want to make music,” he laughs, “and I’m just building technology to allow me to realise it.”
If you ask me, technology doesn’t stand a chance.

I Done A Album is out now on Sunday Best. Beardyman plays the Undergrowth Stage at Forbidden Fruit on June 4. You can listen to 'Where Does Your Mind Go' on hotpress.com now