Joep Beving looks like an unabomber woodsman but plays as tenderly as a lovechild of Nils Frahm and Erik Satie. He wears a giant fucking beard like a badge of honour. It distinguishes him from the rest of the flock. Not that he would have ever fit in with the rest of the classical folks. Fuck no. Joep didn’t get the classic classical musician training and upbringing. One of these things was not like the others. Dude worked in advertising. Get that? Fucking advertising. He didn’t land into piles of money and get trained by the greatest pianists at the age of fetus. Dude started his musical career playing music for commercials. He shleppted out the shlop, wore the monkey suit, and ass-slid down the 9-5 pole like the rest of us stupid fucks. He decided to make an album cause why the fuck not? His family liked his tunes, he liked making them, so he did it. His debut album, Solipsism, got streamed more than 85 million times. The Dutch advertiser was a hit. You better fucking believe record companies noticed these high numbers. He got signed to Deutsche Grammophon right quick. This all happened back in 2015. Hard not to love the story of an underdog with lofty ivy dreams.

His debut album became a trilogy. The second album was called Prehension (2017), and the third was Conatus (2018). This new album release is Joep’s first album outside the trilogy. The dude is a neo-classical megastar. He’s not big among the thoroughly classicaled and shostakoviched, but he’s big for the rest of the world. Motherfucker showcased a Drone Ballet at Burning Man. What kind of composer plays Burning Man? Joep Beving, that’s who.

Joep makes compositions anyone can enjoy. This doesn’t mean they’re unsophisticated or lacking. You know why people like vanilla ice cream? Because it’s fucking delicious, that’s why. Ain’t nothing wrong with having lots of appeal. On top of slick tunes, the guy knows how to inject concepts into his work. On this album, the bigger the concept, the bigger the track. Take for example this album’s title, Henosis, now what in the ever-living fuck does this mean? Henosis is Greek for “oneness”. It’s a concept that basically backs every living religion. The first track off this bitch, “Unus mundus” is fucking Latin for “one world”, a concept about a unified reality that everything comes from and goes back to; Jung was a big fan. The track “Orvonton” is named after a superuniverse that the Milky Way is supposedly part of. “Anamnesis” is having a recollection of a previous existence. The album spans 23 tracks and has a run time of nearly 2 hours. This is a huge bitch in every way.

You like beautiful compositions mixed in with your electronics? This is your jam. You want giant intellectual heady as fuck ideas to ponder through as stringed instruments propel your thoughts all the way to Wondertown? Welcome home. I can’t help but compare Joep to Diogenes, the cynic. While other educated and sophisticated fucks like Plato were dolling out some basic bitch shit, Diogenes challenged their ideals and pushed them to become their best while living out of a barrel with a bunch of dogs and drunk as fuck. Joep continues to prove that he’s the bad boy of classical music and he’s pushing everyone else in the genre to be better. Sure, maybe working in advertising isn’t like living in a barrel, but I bet you anything he used to drink a lot.