the hum / By Bob Doran

Organic Neo-Tribal Electronica

Beats Antique, plus Japanese psyche at the Jam and Julian Marley

(Nov. 5, 2009)  It starts with swoops of electro-noise shifting into a violin line that’s punctured by what seems like unison clapping, then a thundering Balkan-style horn section with tubas and trumpets (sampled from the German/Romanian band, Fanfara Kalashnikov) chopped up, occasionally devolving into electro-stuttering. Low-end bass blips propel the song forward into clubland. Use your imagination and you can see swirling lights and a bejeweled dancer undulating on stage behind feathered fans.    

This is Beats Antique, an Oakland-based live-electro trio with David Satori and Tommy Cappel on laptops and instruments and dancer Zoe Jakes providing choreography that draws on tribal bellydance, African dance, samba and burlesque traditions.

When I spoke with “Sidecar” Tommy, he was winding down from Halloween, which marked his last show playing drums for Yard Dogs Road Show, a circusy rock ‘n’ roll vaudeville cabaret he’d been with for nine years.

“I’ve been making hip hop breakdance beats since I was a kid, making loops, playing drums over them,” he said, calling from his studio in an East Oakland warehouse called Vulcan, where he is one of many renting a work/live space. “I got into electronic music at Berklee College of Music while studying drums. I’ve been playing drums, bass and piano my whole life, so that’s where my specialty is. David is more on the melodic side - guitar, viola, violin, horn arrangements, that side of things.”

Tommy and David met around the time David was finishing music studies at Cal Arts in L.A. David ended up moving to the Bay Area and working with the world beat band Aphrodesia, playing guitar and writing arrangements.

Zoe was with Yard Dogs for a time and was also working with record producer Miles Copeland (brother of Stewart Copeland) who had a dance troupe called Bellydance Superstars. Zoe was one of the Superstars, focusing on tribal style.

“Miles was into the music she was using for her choreography: downtempo sample-based hip hop with Middle-eastern elements, obscure dance tracks by Bjork, things from the Glitch Mob, stuff along those lines. He wanted to put out music like that. One time when we were driving together to a Yard Dogs gig up north, probably at the Mateel, she told me what Miles had in mind. I was totally into it.”

So three years ago, the three got together in Tommy’s Vulcan studio and started working on neo-tribal dance tracks. Beats Antique was the end result, a mini-troupe doing live performances based on studio experimentation. “We try to keep the show moving, always going in new directions,” says Tommy, “always contrasting the organic with the electronic, the ancient with the modern.”

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