In an Interesting Twist, Ben Talks About Himself on Video!

Hi, my name is Ben and I can recite all the words to Boom! Shake The Room.

The last few days have been fairly productive in Benji One Lung Land (although it's not great that that kind of contracts to 'Bland'). Firstly, I did an interview for Arts and Entertainment North Devon, a great website that's kind of a central gathering place for everything (as the name would suggest) arty or entertaining in North Devon. Talli Black wrote a very kind review of Ben Dies At The End for the website a little while back and I was asked to be the inaugural interviewee for a new video series they're going to host on the site.

No photo set is complete without me with my eyes closed.

I think the slot has the working title 'Three Minutes With...' and I look forward to seeing it take off with musicians who have much more interesting things to say (and much better hair) than me. If you like me talking a lot about me and a little bit about time travel, you can watch the interview here.

As well as being dashingly handsome on camera, I've broken the back of a couple of the songs for the album over the last couple of days. One, which I think will probably be the album closer, came together with lyrics really quickly and naturally - I sense it's going to be an effort to record, but hey - what hasn't; another is a more mellow track, about not feeling you have to be ordinary - the only problem with it so far is that it's a bastard to play and sing at the same time. That's not the end of the world, but it does slow down the writing process a little bit... when I can make the transition from 'writing' the song to just 'practicing' it, that won't be a problem any more. I hope. There're also a few lyrics floating around for a song that I've pretty much finished the music for; I feel like I'm finding my pace with the writing process, so things should hopefully move on quite consistently from here.

I'm off to lock myself away in Kent for a couple of weeks from this weekend, doing real-non-musical-life stuff. Supposed to be doing non-musical stuff, but in actual fact I should be able to spend a fair amount of time writing - I guess we'll see how that works out when I get back.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

The Halley's Touch

Hi, my name is Ben and I once punched a tiger square in the face.

Last night, I joined forces with Joe and showed him some of the song ideas for the new album. Working with Joe on music has become second nature now, like how walking or breathing stops being novel after the first thousand-or-so repetitions, but in the same way that running or the occasional gasp can feel liberating and exciting, these collaborations never stop being fresh and satisfying.

One song (I should start giving these songs names, to avoid being so necessarily vague with them) in particular twisted and thrashed its way into a new shape, one that I feel is probably fairly close to where it's going to set. Plugging in the Les Paul and strapping Joe to a small bass combo (which has two settings - 'dirt' and 'slut') transformed what was a light-hearted, bouncing song into something closer to an old-school punk monstrosity, complete with a range of mid-90s Rancid walking bass. To be fair, the only proper way to describe it currently is that it's definitely a Benji One Lung track, just pulled around a bit by Halley's Apparition (yes, yes, the astute among you will notice that that's precisely what it is).

I also had a lyrical breakthrough for the same song, which stands at this point at the 'one verse down' stage - the new-fangled chorus is going to need something pretty special, lyrics-wise, to make the most of a song I'm growing to really like; it might take a bit of time to get perfect, but for this album, I have that time.

Also, this happened:

 

Yeah, that's me and Luke sitting in the back of an articulated lorry, singing Theme From Chicken On The Run to a bunch of about ten people, sitting in the rain. We were soundchecking my set (which was eventually to even heavier rain and even fewer people) ... (It was the rain that made them leave and go inside) and needed a song that we could both bust out at short, unpraticed notice. Let me get this straight - I have a lot of love and pride for what we did for One Day Down. I just don't know why that song is sticking around to haunt me.

Oh, wait - because it's awesome.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben