Sharing a bill with DJs and rock bands, Kid Beyond sticks out. His arsenal doesn’t include turntables, guitars, or drum kits — he’s just a dude with a laptop and microphone. It all makes sense, though, when the Kid opens his mouth and starts to fill the room using his top-shelf beat boxing skills, expert vocals, and some of the deepest, most amazing live-looping chops we’ve ever seen. Whether he’s doing a sensual cover of Portishead’s “Wandering Star,” an eerily realistic rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” or one of his Fatboy Slim-esque party song originals, Kid B’s ability to pump up a crowd using zero support personnel and nominal equipment is truly impressive.

In order to perform thick and thoroughly-arranged songs using no sound source other than his mouth, Kid B does his technological homework. “Each song is an empty [Ableton] Live set,” he says. “There’s no audio in it, but my tracks and effects are already set up and they’re different for each song. I’m just onstage pouring audio into each track.” Running the program on a Sony Vaio laptop with an M-Audio FireWire 410 interface and a Shure SM58 vocal mic, he records and controls his loops via a [Digital Music] Ground Control Pro MIDI foot pedal and some customized programming. “I’m using a little utility called MIDI Translator from http://www.bome.com,” he says. “Each song has a cue list of MIDI events; for any event that comes through the foot pedal, [MIDI Translator] can turn that into a sequence of lots of keystrokes.”

Though he avoids computer-based harmonizers, Auto-Tune, and resonators, Kid B does augment his vocal source audio with less invasive computer-based effects. “I subharmonize my bass,” he says. “I can produce low bass notes with throat singing, but when I’m on a bill with a bunch of DJs, let’s say, I want my stuff to kick as hard as their stuff does. I draw some arbitrary lines of purism,” he continues, laughing. “But I reserve the right to move the line when I want to.”

Though best known for his live shows, Kid B has a solo studio album in the works, and has also found time to collaborate with BT for the producer’s upcoming disc. “I beatboxed and sang and did all sorts of vocal stuff,” he says. “BT’s going to chop it up, blow it into his computer, and create a whole song based on my vocal samples.”