"Style is looking at fashion and ignoring it" -BEANS Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wonderful world of BEANS, aka Mr. Ballbeam. Hip-hop rebel. Wordsmith extraordinaire. Sonic architect. Fashion renegade. Published poet. Culture star. Raised in White Plains, NY and first picked up on in the mid-90's as part of the mythic Brooklyn Boom Poetic collective and the word began to spread. Having achieved his widest acclaim as one-third of the legendary NYC progressive rap crew, Anti Pop Consortium, BEANS continues his grand experiments in music and life with the release of his debut solo album, Tomorrow Right Now, out on Warp Records in March of 2003. With lyrical virtuosity, vanguard production that straight bangs, and one of the most unique and remarkable live performances around, BEANS harkens back to the glory days when all it seemed to take was real talent, real passion and the desire to actually be real and simply shine. Having shared stages and toured with everyone from Radiohead to Vernon Reid, Pharoahe Monch to Aesop Rock, DJ Shadow to Cannibal Ox, Attica Blues to Terranova, plus a summer on Lollapalooza and DJ gigs with Missy Elliott and Gwyneth Paltrow, BEANS has displayed his multitudinous skills and the response has been astounding. Having first made a solo imprint with "Nude Paper", his 12-inch release on Mo'Wax in 2000, BEANS gave us a taste of things to come. With his new record, he makes good on all the promises, delivering songs that stay in the brain and lock you into humming til the day runs out. With the infectious steel drums of "Phreek the Beet", the lo-fi electro-dub of "Hot Venom", or the winding loop-to-loop flutes of "Mutescreamer". All this seems destined to redefine the word "fresh". Collaborations include Bill Laswell, Pharoahe Monch, Prefuse 73, Vernon Reid, Funkstorung, Mike Ladd, Arto Lindsay, New Flesh for Old, Techno Animal, Matthew Shipp, DJ Spooky, Terranova, Aceyalone, and DJ Shadow.
1. New York MC & producer Robert Stewart. Recording since 1997, solo since 2000. Formerly a member of Antipop Consortium.
2. Vancouver post-rock band, formed in 1995. Added a ?The? to the name by 2004. See The Beans.
3. Dutch steetpunk band formed in 1996.
4. Ska group from the 60s.
Beans was formed in February 1996. They started out covering some songs (most of them by Operation Ivy) during rehearsals to hone their musical skills, which were then basically non-existent (Sander and Ronald had picked up the guitar just a few months earlier). After the first bassplayer left the band due to lack of motivation, Sander, Ronald and Bikkel went on to play together even without a bassplayer. After about 9 months of doing this and having taken the first steps towards writing their own songs, they were asked to play their first show in february 1997 at a party in a nearby town. Two weeks before this show, Blok joined the band on bassguitar. Blok was already a great guitarist and his bassplaying skills helped define the sound of the band in the early days. For this first show a bandname had to be put on the flyer, so in a hurry the band came up with the name BEANS and kind of got stuck with it as people started to recognise the name.
After about two years of playing shows they decided to record their first full length album 'weapons of the weak' in 1999 (Since no other punkbands were active in the area at the time, a split record or something comparable was never really an option). They recorded it in two days. Their friends liked the album so much that they decided to send a copy of it to a large dutch metal/punk/hardcore magazine just to see what the reaction would be. Onno cromag (a reviewer for the magazine and something of a Hardcore/punk guru) reviewed the album. After hearing it he gave the band a phonecall, saying he was shocked about the high quality of the album. He had also called his friend Laurens, founder and owner of the Belgian hardcore/punk label I-Scream Records and played some songs over the telephone. Laurens offered them a deal to release two full length BEANS albums. They recorded the second album 'C'mon, Get it on!!!' in february 2000, a year after 'Weapons of the weak'. Again 16 songs, again with Menno Bakker. After this release things started to take off and they went on to play more and more shows, some of them with major bands like Dropkick Murphys, U.S. Bombs Oxymoron and Bombshell Rocks among others. In the spring of 2001 their friends from Antidote asked them to go on a european tour with them, which, of course, they did.
Their third CD 'SO IT GOES' was recorded at the end of september 2001, again by Menno Bakker, but due to unexpected delay it didn't hit the shelves until june 2002. The band hit the road again when the record came out and did a small, self-booked european tour. In the end of 2002 Beans released a split 7-inch on Pogo Punx records with their friends BBK. This split-album appeared in the beginning of 2004 on Hannibal Records from Switzerland with some additional tracks from the Filaments (UK) and Body Bag (Switzerland), under the name "Mucho Mas Chaos". In june 2003 Blok left the band due to other obligations that couldn't be combined with the band's plans. Because Blok wanted the band to keep going as best as possible he decided it would be best if he'd quit. They asked their friend Bas to replace Blok. Bas, already a guitarist, quickly taught himself the necessary bass-playing skills. Beans became a part of the Mutti's booking roster and did a 10 day tour with the Real McKenzies, playing big and mostly sold- out venues all around Germany. In april 2004 Beans played the Mucho Mas Chaos tour with the Filaments and Body Bag. Furthermore, they did some small German tours, made some trips to Denmark and Switserland, and played some well-known Belgian festivals.
Beans did a tour of Germany and Switzerland together with De Heideroosjes and Peter Pan Speedrock in november 2004, and the recording of a new full length album is planned for early 2005. Also upcoming is the compilation CD "Oostpunk", featuring bands from roughly the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Ede area. About 15 bands, including BEANS, have recorded two songs each for this comp. Expect this one to be released somewhere in january '05.
More history will follow as time goes on...............
Beans is:
Sander - guitar & vocals
Ronald - guitar & vocals
Bas - Bass
Bikkel - drums
From Wikipedia:Beans (aka Mr Ballbeam), hailing from White Plains, a suburb of New York City, is one of the founding members of New York's legendary Anti-Pop Consortium, which disbanded in 2002, but have since reformed with new material heard on the group's latest 2009 album, Fluorescent Black, on Big Dada Records. With his distinctive fast-flowing poetic style, Beans manages to amalgamate witty, thoughtful lyrics with his own productions of "Chunky psychedelic electro-hop". ()
Signed to former Anti-pop label Warp Records, Beans has had 2 LP's and an EP releases on that label since starting his solo career in 2003: Tomorrow Right Now (2003), Now Soon Someday (2003 EP), and Shock City Maverick (2004). Only(2005) was released on Thirsty Ear. His last album was a self-released LP on his own imprint, Adored and Exploited, entitled "Thorns". Beans is currently putting the finishing touches on his next release entitled, End It All, which will feature production by Fourtet, Flying Lotus, Ade Firth, In Flagranti, Son Lux, DJ Nobody, Clark, and Fred Bigot for a 2010 release. Beans, along with members of the Anti-Pop Consortium, have released an album on Big Dada entitled Fluorescent Black in October, 2009.
Beans has performed on the same stage with such diverse acts as Radiohead, Prefuse 73, Public Enemy, Kool Keith, Edan, The Rapture, Missy Elliott, Ex- Models, The Locusts, Mike Ladd, and Tortoise having collaborated with, among others, Vernon Reid of Living Colour, Ghislain Poirier, Arto Lindsay, Alec Empire, Funkstörung, Holy Fuck, Evil Nine, and DJ Shadow. He can often be found performing in the many diverse venues from underground clubs in New York's East Village to various festivals worldwide, in the past armed on stage informally with just a microphone and a portable CD player for his backing track, further reflecting the minimalist nature of his style. In recent times, he been performing and touring with DJ Prolific.