Bay Area-based electronic group Beats Antique are headed to Australia this summer for a couple of festival shows.
They’ll be bringing their new stage show that accompanies their new album, ‘A Thousand Faces’, which the trio describe as ‘a journey beyond the sonic realm that’s part odyssey, part genre-warping rock opera’.
An hour spent with Beats Antique... what can punters expect from your live?
People will hear a variety of different styles and genres of music mixed with fully produced tracks to take full advantage of the live setting.
Your latest album, ‘A Thousand Faces’, is quite an epic monster weaving through sweeping rock landscapes with plenty of strings and a classical feel. Happy with the end result?
We are very happy with the end result of ‘A Thousand Faces’. The concept album, based on Joseph Campbell's monomyth, ‘A Hero With A Thousand Faces’, chronicles the steps of the hero's journey. The 19 songs are very diverse and include collaborations with a 30-piece orchestra, Les Claypool of Primus, classical Indian sarod player Alam Khan, singer/ songwriters Lynx and Morgan Sorne on vocals and an Egyptian Sufi vocalist Said, which was recorded during a live performance at the Great Pyramids in Giza, Egypt. We took something on that was bigger than us.
Did you go into this recording with a set idea of what you wanted to record?
We carefully planned out the story and stage show concepts and created sketches to complete the process. We knew we wanted an orchestra and collaborations, so we wrote for those artist specifically.
Was it a long creative process?
The whole album and stage show took around eight months from concept to performance.
What did each artist who you collaborated with bring to the mix?
Les Claypool is known for incredible bass playing and a quirky demeanor that to us represented the ‘fallen angel’ character of Beelzebub. Alam Khan brought to the table a family tradition steeped in mastery including his father Ali Akbar Khan and grandfather Allaudin Khan. We wrote a song ‘Kismat’, containing a Raga (Indian scale) that helped to describe the call to adventure, the moment when you realise you must go save the world! Lynx and Sorne bring an emotional and beautiful vocal/ lyric side to Beats Antique. We let them know what the song was about and the emotion attached, and they come up with lyrics to hit that home. Each person we worked with was very intentional.
The stage show that accompanies the album... how important was it to bring a visual element to the music?
Beats Antique has always had the element of dance and performance art by Zoe Jakes. This time around we wanted to tell the story with custom video created with director Ivan Landau, utilising the technological prowess of Obscura Digital to create the mapping software.
You fuse together a mash of genres... is their a sound you look for when creating new music?
We go through many sketches until we find something that resonates with all of us, and then the song shapes itself by introducing different combinations of instruments. As this process goes forward, different genres pop out and we go for it.
How much of your day-to-day lives is spent working on Beats Antqiue material/ tours etc?
Every day we are awake, we think about and work on Beats Antique. We have created a monster that needs taming! And we are happy to have received the call!
Bringing together so many different sounds, is there ever any creations that don’t make it to public sampling? We have many unused and unheard beds of music waiting in the vaults to be turned into a sonic journey. Like tons!
What’s next for Beats Antique?
Beats Antique is doing a package tour across North America called Creature Carnival, with fellow musicians Shpongle and Emancipator this spring — opening and MCing the show, producer and rapper Lafa Taylor will be the Creature Carnival master of ceremonies.
Life on the road... do you enjoy the travel aspect despite only seeing some places for a night at a time?
That's a hard question. One of the beautiful things about touring is getting the opportunity to play for people around the world, and getting to witness your fans enjoying themselves in their home town. Getting there is the hardest part; sometimes you don't sleep for a few nights to chain some shows together and then step up on the stage and give it everything you got. We tend to get a blast of adrenaline from the amount of beautiful people that have come to support us, so by the second song, it doesn't matter whether it's the first show on a run or the last.
You’re headed out to Australia to play Rainbow Serpent Festival and Earth Frequency this summer... looking forward to the trip?
Australia has been wonderful to us! We've enjoyed meeting our counterparts from down under! We see many similarities between the American and Australian underground music movement!
Any funny, interesting stories from previous trips down under?
Our favourite part of going to Australia is trying to get all the slang down right: "heaps keen, mate!"
What's your favourite app at the moment?
Mirrorgram. Our friends the Glitch Mob helped put it together; it's basically a kaleidoscope maker!
Beats Antqiue play the Rainbow Serpent Festival on 23rd-26th January, 2015 in Lexton, Victoria. They also play the tenth anniversary Earth Frequency on 13th-16th February, 2015 at Ivory’s Rock, an hour’s drive south from the Brisbane CBD.
