Any Beastie Boys fan understands the infamy surrounding their rare, blue moon like album appearances.

With The Mix-up, their seventh album in over twenty years of being in the public’s eye, they decided to go for an entirely instrumental approach.

The result, as demonstrated on several YouTube videos and previews available on their website, is a mashup of ‘70s-sounding American detective show themes (The Rat Cage as an example), funky jamming and pretty much everything in between.

And if you don’t like Off the Grid then clearly there’s something wrong with you.

Their previous album To the 5 Boroughs was entirely hip-hop based and armed with an anti-war political message, In a World gone mad, to protest the war in Iraq. Mike D, Adrock and MCA are all heavily involved in political agendas ranging from pollution (headlining Live Earth in the UK and working with Reverb to cut their carbon footprint for the upcoming tour) and make it very clear.

Through all of this, it could be said that The Mix-Up is a simplistic approach to their art form. No messages, no freestyling, no politics. This time, they let the music do the talking all the way through the album. Meeting them was a very rare privilege and an even rarer occasion – a press conference about their new album. Reputed for being difficult towards interviewers, it was obvious that we were all in for a treat.

“Should we introduce ourselves?”

“We’re the Beastie Boys from New York city,” Adrock announces with a smirk and snigger. With damn near everybody on the planet knowing who you are, a hearty introduction still doesn’t go amiss.

“Does anybody wanna ask a question? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” A silence grips the room, mostly full of fresh faces to the music journalism scene. Hesitance and nerves all round; a sort of green panic and collection of silent prayers to not screw up this opportunity to ask a good question.

“Hi, I’m Antony Whitton from Bandidge.com. How do you think this new album will affect your fanbase? With it being instrumental do you feel it may somewhat alienate your hip-hop orientated fans?”

“Not in a bad way, I think in a good way. An emotional kind of way. A thoughtful way. Like, they might sit by the window and kinda look out… ” – MCA’s (Adam Yauch’s) phone begins to buzz, the press are clearly amused by the interruption, but the pause is soon filled.

“Who cares?” Adrock continues. “You know what I mean, if they like it then they like it, and if they don’t… I mean sure I care, but I think that… I think they’re gonna love it.”

“Was it Spanish.com or Banish.com?” Mike D pipes up.
“Bandidge,” I reply. “An abundance of bands.”
“Do you think you could maybe strike a deal with band-aids, y’know?”
Adrock intervenes: “That’s free advertising advice from Mike right there.”

“Now, do you think if we included a free band-aid in our CD, that would be, you know what I mean? Just as an idea.” I’m sure our editor Rob will be murdering me pretty soon having not followed up the Beastie Boys on this fantastic promotional offer. [I’m sharpening my knives as we speak… - Rob]

“People who listen to us, they know we’re into some weird shit.”

“What do you think? Do you think it’ll have a positive or negative effect?” Adrock asks. Completely unprepared for being asked a question in return all I can muster is “I think it’s a great idea. You guys are awesome and I like the instrumental stuff off your previous albums.” Smiles all round; flattery will get you everywhere.

The next question from the crowd is about the “weird shit” that they’re into at the moment – “like adult baby stuff?”

“We’re very into covering furniture with cowhide. We’ve been doing that a lot.”

“Oh you know what else? The sneakers that have the little rollerskate wheels on the heels. You’ll see a kid walking down the street and all of a sudden they’ll go into rollerskating mode,” Mike adds.

The subject matter veers off with the Beasties at the helm. In their famous approach towards the press, you can never truly tell if your question will be answered or if they will go off on such tangents that you just don’t remember quite why you’re there – for the conference or the entertainment.

Eventually the album’s conception is brought into the forefront – it turns out it all happened by accident: “It’s definitely fun, it’s different. It’s like using a different part of your brain, playing instrumental music,” MCA says. “With the last record it was all hip-hop and we made it with programming: drum machines, synths, sequencers. So when we started on this one we just kinda started it with the instruments.”

“We recorded a bunch of stuff  and we thought we were gonna loop stuff and put vocals on it but then a lot of it sounded cool the way it was,” he concludes.

But it turns out that there was one part of writing the album that was deliberate. When in the studio the group all wore suits. Their reasons are their own: “We started recording last year and we started playing. Then we decided while we were recording that we were gonna go into jazzcat mode. And so we started getting all these old ‘60s suits and ratpack looking stuff,” Adrock says.

“Except for Fridays,” Mike adds. “Fridays was casual Friday. But still, a period look”

“’50s and ‘60s casual.”

There was so much gold to take away from this conference but so little time to go through it with a fine comb. US fans will be happy to know that the Beasties are touring; conversely, UK fans will be devastated to know that they’re now touring nowhere near them.

If you’re that much of a die-hard fan and didn’t get to see them I suggest getting a plane ticket to either Detroit or Illinois in the next few days otherwise you’ll miss them for quite a while.

Never a dull moment with the Beastie Boys, that’s for sure.