The Story
Beats Antique formed in Oakland, California in 2007, when producers David Satori and Tommy "Sidecar" Cappel joined forces with dancer and percussionist Zoe Jakes. What began as a studio project scoring music for belly dance quickly outgrew the format: their debut, Tribal Derivations, fused Middle Eastern and Balkan brass traditions with hip-hop drums and modern electronic production, sketching a genre the band has been happily distorting ever since.
On stage the trio plays like a traveling mechanical circus — live drums, marching bass drum, electric Turkish banjo, and viola colliding with heavy low-end electronics while Jakes leads choreographed spectacle out front. That theatrical streak runs through records like 2010's Blind Threshold, which featured Primus frontman Les Claypool on the crawling single "Beelzebub," and the two-act concept album A Thousand Faces, inspired by Joseph Campbell's hero's journey.
The band has kept restlessly itinerant in the studio too: 2016's Shadowbox was recorded in sessions spanning Moscow, London, and Tel Aviv, folding in collaborators from Russian brass players to klezmer clarinet. Nearly two decades in, Beats Antique remain a fixture of the West Coast festival circuit and still tour steadily — recent setlists run from the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC to Denver's Mission Ballroom.
