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Kid Beyond On Tour with Widespread Panic
10.20 | State Theater | Detroit, MI
10.21 | The Riverside Theater | Milwaukee, WI
10.22 | Northrup Auditorium | Minneapolis, MN
"What takes most people an entire band to produce, Kid Beyond executes with his own mouth. You're in the presence of a higher power... you want to get up and dance."
-SF Weekly ("Best Beatboxer," Best of SF 2004)
"If there was an Olympic gold medal awarded for beatboxing, Kid Beyond would win it."
-San Francisco Bay Guardian
Kid Beyond |
This October, pop-electronica singer / beatboxer Kid Beyond brings his stunning vocal skills to Midwest markets as an opener for Widespread Panic.
Beatboxing – the art of making beats, grooves and instruments with the human voice – was born out of the hip-hop community in the early 80's. Two decades later, the art form is exploding into new musical realms – and at the forefront of this movement is San Francisco's Kid Beyond. A beatboxer for over 20 years, Kid Beyond is a legend in the West Coast beatbox world – and now his "live-looping" work is gaining him impressive international attention.
Looping and multi-tracking his voice onstage to create his own live backing tracks, Kid Beyond layers his commanding singing voice over his own beatboxing and vocal instrumentation. The result is a riveting brew of pop-electronica that has drawn comparisons to Gorillaz, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Thievery Corporation and M.I.A. His live show has been called "Amazing... truly impressive" (Keyboard Magazine); "Deep, powerful, transcendent..." (SF Weekly); "Kid Beyond's mouth is something you must hear" (Remix Magazine); "A truly charismatic performer with an incredibly soulful singing voice..." (San Francisco Bay Guardian "Best Oral in the Bay," Best of the Bay 2006).
Kid Beyond's diverse vocal talents converge on his debut EP, Amplivate. Produced by alt-hip-hop wizard Alias (Anticon Records), San Francisco's The Rondo Brothers (Dan the Automator) and LA's Gabriel Mann, Amplivate casts Kid Beyond's soulful pipes and Buddhist influenced lyrics in a sea of crunchy breakbeats, dubby basslines, wobbly turntables, swirling strings, bleepy bloops, distorted guitars... all produced from his mouth.
Kid Beyond's career has exploded in the past year. An endorsement video for Ableton Live (the groundbreaking electronic music software) – of Kid Beyond demonstrating his live-looping techniques in his kitchen – became one of the Web's most viral videos of 2005. Director JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost) requested a Kid Beyond version of the Mission Impossible theme for the MI:3 DVD. VH1 brought him onto their reality show "Supergroup" to fill in for Jason Bonham as a human drum kit, appearing alongside Ted Nugent, Skid Row's Sebastian Bach and Anthrax's Scott Ian. A profile on Kid Beyond landed in heavy rotation on Al Gore's Current TV cable channel. Electronica pioneer BT flew him to LA to collaborate on an all-vocal dance track. Hip-hop / spoken-word legend Sage Francis put one of Amplivate's tracks ("I Shall Be Free") on his upcoming KnowMore.org compilation CD.
Having shared the stage with Keane, Buckethead, Lyrics Born, Michael Franti & Spearhead, The Coup, String Cheese Incident, Amon Tobin, KRS-One, The Wailers and Particle, Kid Beyond has attracted an intensely loyal following of techno-Burners, hip-hop heads, jam-band fans, MySpace kids and rabid bloggers worldwide. This "underground legend" is not going to stay underground for long.
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