BINKBEATS The "Beats Unraveled" Series

BINKBEATS, not a name most people know, not even most hardcore Hip Hop Instrumental fans.
This guy seems to have come out of nowhere popping up a few months ago on Facebook, YouTube, and SoundCloud. There is not much information about this Dutch producer, how long he has been making music, if he has any original material, or what he will do in the future. As of right now he has produced and posted one song a month for the past three months, all covers of Hip Hop or Experimental Electronic tracks. The interesting thing about how he plays is not just covering these songs that any underground Hip Hop fan would know, but that he is does it with live instrumentation.

Madlib, the producer that made the track The Healer for Erykah Badu originally, is best known as a "sample based" producer. It is interesting to listen to the two tracks, Madlib who sampled records to get the sound, and then you have BINKBEATS interpret the track back to live instruments; that were likely played in the original records that Madlib had sampled. BINKBEATS also uses looping techniques so he can have all the instruments that he is playing sound like a live band as they slowly build upon one another.

Flying Lotus or FlyLo is an Experimental Electronic Beat musician. For this interpretation BINKBEATS plays Getting There he uses a wide selection of Bells and Percussion as well as Piano's and Slinky's, he also introduces us to his vocals, which will be revisited in later tracks. This time using a mix of live instrumentation as well as on the spot sampling and looping (probably a lot like Flylo did in his recording) he brings this track to its desired place and starts to lay vocals over it until it is sounding a lot like the original. But because of the chosen instruments, a lot more organic sounding then electronic.

For BINKBEATS latest track Without You originally by Lapalux, he focuses on dreamy/dark Synths. The song slowly slowly builds with drums and vocals being played over the ever reaping Synthesizer samples. He also has a pretty memorizing Xylophone solo at around 2:45. Myself not being a fan of Lapalux or this song, was quite surprised as I kept hitting the repeat button to listen to this track again and again.

I would like to see BINKBEATS venture off and start creating original material himself. As you can see from watching his YouTube videos and the equipment he has, he could probably come up with some pretty impressive sounds. However if he never does, I will likely be just as satisfied with him releasing a cover version of a new song every month for our listening pleasure.