A few years back, I did a piece for P&P looking at the highs and lows of the dubstep beatboxing scene. My intrigue with making electronic music with your mouth stems from a few places: primarily it's my love for hip-hop, growing up with the likes of Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie, and Buff Love "the Human Beatbox" making the music with their mouths. It also comes from people trying to get me to identify tracks by mimicking the noises vocally (you know, those conversations that start out like "do you know that song that goes NEEEERR na na na na WOOOOW"). Usually it never worked; I remember getting off work and having a friend of mine hit me on my phone, trying to remake the bassline from Dillinja's "Hard Noize." In any case, I'm drawn to people recreating freaky sounds (possibly why I'm so obsessed with remixes in general), and getting hit with the above video, featuring a YouTuber named Shivaxi remaking Ed Rush, Optical, and Fierce's drum & bass anthem "Alien Girl" completely acapella got me open.
The best part? He nailed it. From the eerie sounds in the intro to the unforgettable neuro bassline, he's on point. He has to stop at the end, as he says it hurts his throat, but we might have an acapella prodigy on our hands... even though his take on Black Sun Empire & Noisia's "Hideous" isn't as ill:
He says that he's taking requests, so let's pool together all of our favorite drum & bass tracks and see what Shivaxdi can do!
UPDATE It looks like Shivaxi has an acapella version of Calyx & TeeBee's "Elevate This Sound" sorted as well:
