Beans

There are at least 4 Beans: 1. New York MC & producer Robert Stewart. 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. 1. Beans is a rapper from White Plains, New York. He was a member of the underground hip hop group Antipop Consortium. He is a founder of the record label Adored And Exploited. With his distinctive, fast-flowing and poetic style, Beans amalgamates witty, thoughtful lyrics with his own productions of "Chunky psychedelic electro-hop." According to the Pitchfork Media review for the album Thorns, "The MC is simply good at what he's good at, putting together bushy, crooked beats with rhymes that are both confessional and evasive." Beans has released two LPs and one EP on AntiPop Consortium's former label Warp Records since launching his solo career in 2003: Tomorrow Right Now, Now Soon Someday EP and Shock City Maverick. The third solo album Only was released on Thirsty Ear Recordings in 2005, followed by the fourth album Thorns on Adored And Exploited in 2007. In 2011, Beans released the fifth solo album, End It All. on Anticon. It features productions by Four Tet, Sam Fogarino of Interpol, Clark, Tobacco, Fred Bigot, Nobody, Son Lux, Ade Firth, In Flagranti, and The Bumps. Beans has collaborated with Vernon Reid of Living Colour, Kool AD, Ghislain Poirier, Arto Lindsay, Alec Empire, Funkstörung, Holy Fuck, Evil Nine, DJ Shadow among others. 3. 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 Read more on Last.fm. 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