Beat Box, Jazz fans and music lovers – meet The Boxettes! The 5 woman band from London are here to perform for one night only at the Holon Theatre on Friday, March 7th as the international guests of the Holon Women’s Festival. I’ve just come from the theatre, where I heard them perform their single “Puppet on a String,” (from their EP No Strings) as well as a cool cover of Lorde’s Royals, and I am still dancing inside as I type!
The theme for this year’s festival is “In and Out” – and The Boxettes are not a band to be boxed in by any definitions. Chatting with the group after the all too short song session, Midnight East learned that they all met five years ago, studying jazz at the Guildhall School of Music in London.
When you see a women’s singing group, beat box might not be the first thought that comes to mind, one might expect something more along the lines of a cappella – but The Boxettes are different.
Starting out, The Boxettes saw themselves as “a group of singers and a beat boxer who wanted to use the skills we have to make music. So we thought of ourselves as just a band and didn’t really consider the a cappella thing until a little bit later so perhaps it’s made our music a bit different. the way that we set up our music isn’t necessarily SATB formation, we have bass lines, and we have big beats, and we have choruses and atmospheric effects with our voices. We were coming from a compositional process of improvisation and new sounds, as opposed to a cappella or traditional beat box. We all listen to so much music I guess there are influences coming from everywhere, we’re from different backgrounds musically and also culturally.”
Although they also do covers, The Boxettes usually perform their own material.
“We mostly do original songs we write all our own tunes, we have different methods of writing – maybe some person will write the composition line and bring it to the group, or maybe we all sit in a room and improvise together.”
With two EPs out, The Boxettes are currently working towards an album, but their main focus is on honing their sound. At the moment they are doing a lot of writing and recording, and say: “we’re having so much fun experimenting with new sounds, trying everything out – it’s great!”
Fun and lively onstage, these singer/composers are thoughtful and articulate in discussing their artistic process, explaining: “I guess it’s like a case of fluency…when you are working on something and you don’t yet know what it is, you come up with lots of different ideas and they’re only connected because the same people are playing them. But you grow a confidence in the sounds, or methods that work and I guess right now we are trying to find that confidence and methodology to create infinite amounts of new music that please us but please you guys as well.”
The Boxettes will perform Friday March 7, 2014 at 22:00, at the Holon Theatre (11 Kugel Street, Holon). Tickets are 80 – 130 NIS and may be ordered online, at this link.
Links: The Boxettes website, facebook page.
