FEATURED
Brief info
The Beatroot Road is an intercultural, post-genre music collective based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Formed during the pandemic lockdown by musical masterminds Mark Russell and Hazel Fairbairn, the project focuses on global collaborations that deliberately cross, subvert, and blend contrasting musical genres. Their unique philosophy centers around having complex rhythms and drum beats at the core of every track while using mismatched styles and instrumentation from around the world
The Music:
There is no one genre that could represent Mark’s production style, but these are not intellectual experiments where you keep waiting for the tune to start. Mark says; "If asked what it is, I like to call it music for dancing, but I’ve heard it called other things, some quite kind, some not so much. That’s enough for me. 'The Beatroot Road' describes what it is; this is just where we are right now on the journey.”
This music is, at its heart, processed recorded performances of music for dancing, played by human musicians.
Some of the songs were penned by the late, great and largely unheard Demmy James, who wrote lyrics and songs with layers and a message. There isn’t enough of that these days, so now seemed like as good a time as any to set them loose.
The People:
Mark Russell
Spending most of his early years in Khartoum in the Sudan, Mark returned to the UK to finish growing up in a multicultural Scotland, where he learnt African, Caribbean and Celtic drum styles alongside Rock and Roll music and all of its offsprings. He had to lie about his age to get a job to buy his first drum set at 15, and since then his career has included a covers band residency at a brothel, European and North American tours with black light EDM fusion band 'Horace X', and playing Celtic dance music for UK royalty in a kilt.
Over the decades Mark’s personal musical high points include: opening for Lee Perry, (and Toots, and Culture), recording with Dennis Bovell, and Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, having a Balkan fusion EP nominated for a UK Mercury award, international touring in general, with the Canadian Festival circuit in particular.
A lifelong cultural nomad, Mark felt at home every time he toured Canada, and eventually moved with Hazel to the melting pot of Vancouver where so many others live comfortably within more than one culture.
Hazel Fairbairn
Hazel abandoned early classical violin training for Celtic fiddle, and went on to write the world’s first PhD on Irish pub music at Cambridge University. After studying with South Indian violin master Chandru, Hazel went on to play Romani & Cajun fiddle with Horace X, while also running a Ceilidh band.
Since moving to BC, she has been adding cutting edge audio effects to the constant exploration of the violin’s boundaries, and working with Mark to create the heavy rhythms, tunes and textures that glue The Beatroot Road together. Hazel is also experimenting with immersive audio recording, teaches music technology in Vancouver and creates soundscapes for films by award winning poet Kim Trainor.
The other collaborators and contributors are all seasoned international session musicians and artists with roots in Austria, Canada, China, Kenya, Korea, Moldova, Nigeria, Punjabi, Türkiye, UK, USA, and Venezuela. ...so far. They will all be introduced individually with each release.
They represent and celebrate some of the many cultural integrations that part of Canada is travelling towards in the 21st century.