Beats Antique X BitTorrent Bundle

A Thousand Faces: Act II | Instant Download
A Thousand Faces: Act II [Album]
“The Approach” [Music Video]
The Making of A Thousand Faces [Documentary Video]
Beats Antique Poster [Discount]

A Thousand Faces: Act II | Instant Download
“Beelzebub, feat. Les Claypool” [Bonus Track]
“Dragon’s Den”: remixable video stems
“Dragon’s Den”: projection art video files
A Thousand Faces: Act II [Artwork by Leighton Kelly]
“You The Starry Eyed” [Music Video]

Words with Beats Antique: On Campbell, Collaboration, and Chasing Unicorn Tears

BitTorrent: A Thousand Faces: Act II represents a new installment of an interactive project dedicated to the work of Joseph Campbell. How did Beats Antique come across Campbell as a source of inspiration? In what ways does the album bring to life his mythology?

Beats Antique: With our music, we strive to bridge the gap between different cultures to create a unique experience. Joseph Campbell’s idea of the monomyth — the one story that connects all of the world’s cultures — really resonated with us. We knew we wanted to create a concept album, and Joseph Campbell’s work seemed to be the obvious choice.

Each song on the album walks through the chapters of Joseph Campbell’s A Hero with a Thousand Faces. Our live show brings together art from Bay Area creators to evoke a truly Beats Antique interpretation of the Hero’s Journey.

BitTorrent: We live in a time where a video channel, YouTube, is the Internet’s dominant radio station. Music is more visual, maybe, than ever before. And in many ways, Beats Antique is representative of that shift. How does visual art influence your work? What role does it play?

Beats Antique: Within the music we create, visual art plays a huge role. Because the band has a third member who is a dancer, the visual aspect has always been integrated into the show.

The experience of seeing the show live is a big part of Beats Antique, and we always are dabbling in some visual art, whether it is additional dancer performers, crazy props or weird performance art. Really any medium, whether its music, dance, or video, is just another opportunity to express ourselves and immerse the audience deeper into another world.

BitTorrent: Much of your music is the result of direct collaboration, or direct dialogue with fans – be it at live shows, over video, or through Kickstarter. Can you talk to us about this (co-creation) process?

Beats Antique: Our goal is to bridge the creative gap between people and cultures. One way of doing this is by building collective art pieces with our fans around the world.

That’s in part the idea for the traveling landscape pieces, “The Approach” (included in the BitTorrent Bundle). We started by putting a call out to our fans for faces. These faces would be painted on a template, and incorporated into our video show. We received a ton of submissions, and it was hard to choose. But now, during a section of A Thousand Faces, you get to travel through the many faces of Beats Antique listeners. They’ve become part of the fabric of our songs.

BitTorrent: What’s your goal for this album? How do you hope people hear and experience it?

Beats Antique: We really wanted to push ourselves creatively on all levels for this album. We’d never created a full concept album before, and with this work we were able to bring together all facets of our creative abilities. The album itself includes elements of world music, string orchestration, and electronica. And the full stage production has involved entirely new choreography that has matches the thematic progression of our work, as well as advances in projection mapping.

BitTorrent was the best way to get the A Thousand Faces project to our fans. The experience of A Thousand Faces isn’t just the music. It’s the visual art and the incredible stage production we’re currently on tour with. For us, Bundle represented a unique opportunity to deliver, and collaborate on, a fully realized concept.

BitTorrent: What do you guys have in store for the next year?

Beats Antique: Next year is so far away, in the now, we plan on taking a ride on a dragon’s eye into the underworld in search of unicorn’s tears to quench the thirsts of centuries to come.

About BitTorrent Bundle

BitTorrent Bundle is an Alpha project, made with and for the web’s creative community. Our mission is to help artists connect directly with fans, inside the content they share.

Each BitTorrent Bundle, like this one, created in partnership with Beats Antique, allows artists to distribute content directly to the Internet. And each Bundle comes with a key. Fans can unlock artist content with an email address. The idea is to make each song a storefront, and each file more valuable, each time it’s shared. Got ideas for the next BitTorrent Bundle? Hit us up.