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Beats Antique presents 'Shadowbox' Sidecar Tommy, Zoe and David Satori are Beats Antique. Photo by Sequoia Emmanuelle Monday Dec 26, 2016 at 9:00 AM Beats Antique cannot be pigeonholed using a single genre. One listen to its newest album, "Shadowbox," released in October on Beats Antique Records, and the trio's hybrid of sound makes perfect sense. The ability to blend many different kinds of music to form a distinctive and peerless album is what this band has been doing for the past 10 years. Sidecar Tommy, David Satori and Zoe Jakes make up Beats Antique and commemorate their 10th year together as a band with the new album. The group is on a tour that will take its vision of stage performances to theaters across America. "Shadowbox" is the theme of the tour and the name of the group's new storefront in Berkeley, California. It's all coming together with this release. Beats Antique will perform Thursday, Dec. 29, at the Historic Ashland Armory, 208 Oak St. Doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 in advance and can be purchased online at liveatthearmory.com or Music Coop. Tickets will be $35 the day of the show. The concert is open to ages 21 and older. Mostly recorded at Beats Antique's studio in Oakland, the San Francisco Bay Area band also recorded in Russia and Israel. “We were lucky to record in both Moscow and Tel Aviv, because we had shows there and wanted to connect with the local artists," the group writes on its website. "We had amazing sessions in both locations. In Moscow. we recorded on the outskirts of the city in a wild industrial complex. We followed strange corridors to a plush bamboo-floored recording studio with state of the art gear. When we were in Tel Aviv, we gave a call to a local legend Yossi Fine and he helped us get time at Pluto Studios, which is one of the best in the city. We recorded with Talya Solan and her amazing group of musicians. We used elements of the Tel Aviv session to create our track “Bdna Salam,” which is raising money for Syrian refugees.” Along with Solan, other cameos on "Shadowbox" include Lafa Taylor, Alam Khan, Tatiana Kalmykova, brass-house trio Too Many Zooz, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Dana Elle, Madoline Tasquin and Medium Troy Orchestra. Shadowbox is a retrospective of sorts, with Beats Antique members pulling from all of their previous work — almost a homage to the first 10 years of their career. “This will be our first full album produced in Beats Antique’s recording studio and dance performance space. We feel like 'Shadowbox' touches on all our styles, from down-tempo Middle Eastern influences to cinematic orchestral arrangements. The songwriting process also is different for every song. Sometimes David will come in with a melody and Sidecar will add the bass and beats, or vise versa. One thing that always makes the songwriting process unique is that Zoe creates and arranges music based around stories she wants to tell though dance, so sometimes the performance aspect influences the creation of the music.” In June, the group premiered the first single from the new album, “Killer Bee,” featuring Taylor, on Billboard.com. The track is “about standing up to prejudices. Just because someone calls you a killer bee, doesn’t mean you need to kill. We want people to define themselves and not be defined by what people think they should be.” In addition to being a "killer’ track," with a compelling music video directed by Kyrian Bobeerian, Beats Antique donated a part of the proceeds from its July 1 show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre to The Honeybee Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of bees. For an enthusiastic touring band, a new album also means a new tour, and since Beats Antique is all about the "concept," "Shadowbox" is another opportunity for its members to get their creative juices flowing for live shows. The band plans to use shadows, light, Indonesian shadow puppetry, custom-created lanterns, dance, storytelling, crowd participation and more to make the shows a visual spectacle for audiences. "Shadowbox," an album that is an amalgamation of the history of Beats Antique, merged with a tour that will show off what this band does best — transform, innovate and revolutionize what you think you know about music.