The Artaud Beats came together in a chance encounter at Jean-Hervé Peron's Avantgarde Festival in Schiphorst, 2009. Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara were there as a duo; Chris Cutler and John Greaves were in a quartet with Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause. It was Geoff who proposed the quartet. Since Geoff, Chris, and John had all been in Henry Cow together in the 70s, they gave themselves a name with a (subtle) reference to Henry Cow's famous composition "Living in the Heart of the Beast," thus becoming "The Artaud Beats."