Beardyman: One Album Per Hour

The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Wednesday, October 21, to Thursday, October 22

“WE are such skilled improvisers in our everyday lives. But for some reason the stuff we see on stage is almost exclusively pre-rehearsed – even in stand-up.”

Beardyman, aka former Brighton resident Darren Foreman, has been shaking that up for the last three years with his One Album Per Hour show.

Based around his incredible improvisational skills both in musical composition and lyrical wit, he uses a cutting edge rig called the Beardytron to create a new batch of songs purely inspired by audience-suggested titles and genres.

“It’s not something I had ever seen anyone else do,” says Foreman.

“For good reason – it’s quite hard!

“In this day and age music doesn’t have to be the same thing.

“The process was always write some songs on a guitar or whatever, play them, send demos out, see what it sounds like with a band, get to a studio, record it, then put it in some plastic cases and sell it.

“People are experimenting with putting music on Spotify or iTunes. For their last album the Wu Tang Clan put out only one copy for $1 million. I don’t have to do any of that. The way I’m doing it is by creating a whole bunch of albums which you have to be there on the night to hear.”

He has put some highlights from his live shows online –but admits he didn’t want to swamp the internet with hours of new music.

The selections include the organ-driven psychedelia of These Shoes Are Made For Walking On Water, the Peter Gabriel-inspired Tickle The Frog, the Brian Eno-esque ambience of Lemon Scented Sunset, the techno-driven Another Lost Thursday and the inspired B-movie madness of Revenge Of The Cookie Monster.

As well as building up tracks live, using a variety of loop pedals to create percussion tracks using his beatboxing skills and layered melody lines on guitar and keyboard, Foreman improvises his own lyrics, having sharpened his craft with the help of regular collaborator freestyle MC Leen.

“He’s not of this earth,” says Foreman. “He’s my sensei, my mentor. His guidance is completely amazing – you have to work backwards, like in a detective novel. You get to the end of a line in your head a couple of seconds before you’ve thought of what you’re going to say!

“I’m testing my subconscious to get where the music is going. There is a lot going on in my head when I’m doing the show – I love it. It’s the only time my entire brain is engaged.”

Part of the joy on the night is when things go wrong.

“Robert Fripp would call it dealing with hazards,” says Foreman. “If nothing ever goes wrong then you’re blind to what it is you’re doing. It becomes very boring. If you deliberately introduce hazards to trip yourself up you can feel like you’re alive again.

“It’s like in jazz, if you play a wrong note then play it again and again until it sounds right.”

He is looking forward to returning to his spiritual home of Brighton, where he lived for five years after attending the University Of Sussex.

“They were some of the best years of my life,” he says. “They made me into the person I am today.”

But this could be the last chance to see the show he has toured for three years.

“I like to keep myself challenged,” he says. “I have got some really amazing reviews from my Edinburgh run. But as soon as you start getting five star reviews you have done it. It was like when I won the UK Beatbox Championship [in 2006]. It was great – and I wanted to win another. And I did – I got two in a row, but that was enough, I wanted to do something more difficult.”

These might include exploring longer form continuous dance music and experimental down tempo trip-hop.

“The reason I wanted to do this show in the first place was to see if it was possible,” he says.

“I created a machine to enable me to do it. Now I want to use all this gear for all sorts of different things and not necessarily try to squeeze it all into one show.”

Starts 8pm, tickets £19/£17. Call 01273 709709.