Unafraid to dig deep and also play the hits, the BEIGE sound is anything but.
BEIGE by name but definitely not by nature, the DJ’s 2022 set at the beloved Honcho Campout is a perfect example of their singular appeal. A meandering journey through murky house cuts, swaggering funk, dreamy indie dance and unapologetic pop, it also never veers too far into chinstroke territory — Talking Heads, The Pussycat Dolls, Frank Ocean, Tina Turner and Dolly Parton all make unexpected appearances in various guises. “It’s about playing with tension and contrast,” says BEIGE, “bringing in things that the audience are familiar with and seeing how you can subvert them, so maybe you recognize the vocal but it’s with arrangements you’ve never heard before.”
Based in Detroit and vinyl-trained, BEIGE specializes in multi-hued, carefully considered and highly danceable sets such as this. Whether they’re playing smooth R&B and downtempo soul, crunchy electro, cheeky disco edits or oddball tech house, the only constant in their sets is quality. They made their club debut proper in Detroit in 2017, immediately grabbing the attention of the cognoscenti with their wide-ranging, on-point selections and silky, inventive transitions. Uninterested in gimmickry or self-promotion, they prefer to let their work speak for itself, collecting a growing number of fans and increasingly impressive bookings along the way.
BEIGE grew up moving around the US but their musical journey really began in Melbourne, Australia, where they lived for a year after college in 2013. The Melbourne electronic music scene was thriving and BEIGE was introduced to festival culture and a spectrum of sounds they’d never heard before.
They’d attempted to learn a few instruments while growing up but nothing stuck, and while music had always been a passion, expressed through making mix CDs for friends and scouring MySpace for new musical discoveries, they never aspired to a career as a DJ.
That happened by accident, when they crossed paths with feminist DJ network Seraphine Collective in their new home of Detroit in 2015. Seraphine was offering sliding-scale vinyl DJing workshops, and BEIGE caught the bug instantly. “We would just go to each other’s houses and spend hours round robining with random dollar bin records and it was purely for fun, which I’m grateful for,” they say. “If I ever had a notion in my mind that I was trying to do this professionally or for a particular reason I think it would have poisoned it from the start.”
Before long, however, BEIGE graduated from playing friends’ parties to their first real gig at Detroit’s Temple Bar and shortly afterwards, an all-vinyl set at Marble Bar with the late, great Mike Huckaby in February 2018. It was a defining moment that also marked the beginning of BEIGE’s professional career — i.e. being paid to DJ in Detroit two-three times weekly, as well as more regularly in places like New York. They hold down a residency at Brooklyn’s renowned The Lot radio and are regularly booked for the city’s most forward-thinking parties at venues such as Nowadays, Good Room and Mansions.
Their biggest boost, however, came via the support of esteemed DJs and producers Eris Drew and Octo Octa, who recognized in BEIGE a special talent. The T4T LUV NRG label owners began booking BEIGE to play parties and a Boiler Room with them, then released BEIGE’s AMEN! Volume 1 mixtape in April 2022. A showstopping devotional party mix covering more than three decades and many variants of house music, it highlighted BEIGE’s technical skill and savvy alongside their impeccable taste.
They debuted at Detroit’s Movement Festival that same year and have been on a hot streak ever since, embarking on their first international tour early in 2023 which included stops at Berlin’s Panorama Bar and Amsterdam’s De School. BEIGE returned to Movement Festival as part of a marathon of gigging over Memorial Day weekend in Detroit this year, culminating in a sunrise back to back set with Octo Octa to close the celebrated Return to the Source event for New York institution The Bunker. Other scheduled 2023 highlights include a return to Europe to play Body Movements festival in London and Draaimolen Festival in the Netherlands, and their first appearance at the coveted Sustain Release festival in upstate New York.
As likely to play a huge hit as to introduce you to your new favorite track, BEIGE occupies an important niche between their stuffier and less imaginative peers. When the conditions are right, they endeavor to create transcendental dancefloor moments akin to opening a wormhole, “where everybody in the room is collectively participating in this consciousness-melding experience and I’m just the conductor.” Armed with a healthy disrespect for genre and convention and a discerning but unpretentious music collection, BEIGE aims to please, but more commonly thrills, delights, and inspires.