The Beatroot Road dig deep with their new single and video Underground Roots — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The first release by the sonically adventurous alternative-world group from B.C. Underground Roots is funky, light and fun — but the lyrics carry a deeper meaning for the band. “It’s a song of hope,” explains musical mastermind Mark Russell. The song, he says, is “talking about the strength of roots to withstand the seasonal changes of the overground world, whether they be in plants, music or life.”
Russell and violinist Hazel Fairbairn are the core of the project, which operates more like a collective, with established artists coming together to release one track every six weeks, eventually leading to their first album in spring of 2025. The concept is to explore a varied musical landscape with complex drumbeats at the heart of each song. Underground Roots has an African/Latin vibe, but fans are put on notice that this is not the only style the group will undertake.
Russell says his style is hard to define, but Underground Roots is a good representation of the complexity listeners can expect from the group, the track itself being a true fusion. Kenyan vocalist Lucinda Karrey was recruited for the song, with Fuki Anditi on backing vocals, lending her sunny, simple style to the complex drums and production. Russell plays all the percussion, with many traditional African instruments like the conga and cabassa, but adds a surprising twist with the bodhrán, a traditional Irish drum. The video is also a fusion, with multiple layers going into the finished product, with 3D animation from Griang and Mesut C. from Türkiye, with live footage of Lucinia shot in Kenya by Alfie.
The band’s upcoming album aims to be an international, intercultural series of songs with half a century of history, originally conceived in lockdown in a studio in the forest on a mountain near Vancouver — a varying collection of works that have beats at the core, all showing deliberate disrespect to styles and conventions wherever possible. Having grown tired of the same lineups doing the same ever-decreasing variations within fixed genres, the artists combine the wrong instruments and the wrong styles with the right intentions.
“If asked what it is, I like to call it music for dancing,” Russell says. “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.”
Russell spent most of his early years in Khartoum in the Sudan, eventually returning to Scotland, where he learnt African, Caribbean and Celtic drum styles alongside rock ’n’ roll. 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 EDM fusion band Horace X, and playing Celtic dance music for U.K. royalty in a kilt.
Over the decades Mark’s personal musical high points include opening for Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, (and Toots, and Culture), recording with Dennis Bovell, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, having a Balkan fusion EP nominated for a U.K. Mercury Prize, international touring in general, and the Canadian festival circuit in particular.
Watch the video for Underground Roots above, listen to the song below, and visit The Beatroot Road on their website, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
