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Interviews

What happens when a 7 piece funk machine hits the road? We chatted to Beautiful Beasts to find out

Beautiful Beasts are busy beasts; soon to head on tour in support of their funk-oozing new single, Pony Ride, the band answered some questions about what they’re doing to prepare.

BB

Beautiful Beasts are bringing an enormous 7-piece, funk-fuelled behemoth on tour to make you party ’til you drop. Lucky for us, we know what to expect.

HAPPY: Are you looking forward to heading out on tour? What can fans expect if they attend a gig?

BB: We can’t wait to head out on tour! This will be our second tour and we had such a blast the first time we toured. People coming to see us can expect to hear a massive sound from our seven-piece lineup, a bunch of unreleased songs and a few cheeky party-starter covers.

HAPPY: Your music definitely swings towards the funk genre, where did that influence come from?

BB: I think the whole funk-pop thing we’ve been doing has been kind of a natural thing. We used to play a lot more slower, ballad-like stuff as well as some more upbeat stuff, and then found on our first tour that not only did people respond to our more funky and groovy songs, but we also had a lot more fun playing and writing those ones.

So it was really inevitable. Funk, soul and hip hop are three genres that have influenced all members of the band, so it makes sense that that sound comes through in our songs.

HAPPY: What process do you go by to write music, if any?

BB: Our songwriting methods vary from song to song to keep things fresh, but usually the bones of a song will be brought in by our singer, Andy, and then as a band we’ll work on the grooves and instrumental arrangements together. Sometimes we write our songs live in a room together, other times we use programs like Ableton or Logic to lay down our parts and really think about them.

HAPPY: How do you go about balancing music and everyday responsibilities?

BB: We’re all still trying to figure that out! We’re all studying music at uni together so the fact that we’re playing music together everyday at school makes things a heap easier. It also comes down to knowing what everyone’s roles in the band are and making sure that we all have time set aside in the week where we’re only working on our music, and organising everything else around that.

HAPPY: Pony Ride is a fantastic pop track, how did it come together and what’s it about?

BB: Pony Ride started out as a little funk jam that we wrote with our old guitarist and keyboardist that we kept in the set because it received such a good response live. We recorded the instrumental tracks for Pony over a year ago in the same sessions that we recorded our last single Papaya (Room to Move). We were never 100% happy with how it sounded so spent a year mixing, remixing, adding and removing elements to it with our producer Robert Amoruso until we ended up with the version that we just released.

HAPPY: Do you play the tune differently live?

BB: Every song we do live has a lot more rawness than it’s recorded counterpoint, and that’s unavoidable. I think it’d be boring if we 100% replicated our recorded songs in our live sets. Pony Ride is a lot more raw live, but it has stacks more energy and crowd participation. We also usually go into a short cover of Ginuwine’s Pony at the end, because that song’s an absolute jam.

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HAPPY: What are some of your favourite venues to play and why?

BB: Any venue where people aren’t afraid to get up and party! Special shout out to The Penny Black in Brunswick, VIC, I think we’ve played there the most of any venue, always a great vibe there, and of course the Grace Darling in Collingwood, VIC, where we’ll be playing our Melbourne show. There’s a venue in Adelaide that we’re playing on this tour, the Crown and Sceptre, we played there last time we were in Adelaide and it’s always a good time down there too.

HAPPY: What do you think draws people to your music?

BB: We don’t take ourselves to seriously when we play onstage and like to get the crowd moving as well. I think being a seven-piece also gets people visually and aurally excited as well, it’s not something you see often. At the end of the day though, we try to make our songs as catchy and fun as possible, and that resonates with people as well.

HAPPY: What do you hope to achieve as a band in the future?

BB: If we can keep doing what we’re doing now on a bigger scale than we’ll be happy. We want to tour more, record more, write more, be heard by more people, and pay our bills while doing it.

HAPPY: What’s the next step for Beautiful Beasts?

BB: After our tour, we’re going to be going underground for a bit to do a bunch of writing and recording. We’ve been tossing around a few song ideas in the last few months, but as we’ve been gigging so much and have been preoccupied with life stuff, we haven’t had time to properly sit down and realise these songs properly. So it’ll look like we’re a bit off the map, but we’ll back and better than ever once we’ve really worked on our new songs.

Don’t miss Beautiful Beasts on tour at these dates:

Sun 12th June – Grace Darling Hotel, Melbourne VIC.
Fri 1st July – Corporate Moose, Mildura VIC
Sat 2nd July – Crown and Sceptre, Adelaide SA.
Thur 7th July – The Phoenix, Canberra ACT
Fri 8th July – The World Bar, Sydney NSW
Sat 9th July – Captain Cook Hotel, Sydney NSW