{"title":"Ben Chatwin","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBen Chatwin is a talented musician known for his unique blend of ambient, electronic, and experimental sounds. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Bersarin Quartett, Greg Haines, and Rafael Anton Irisarri, he has created a distinct musical style that captivates listeners.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith his mesmerizing compositions and intricate soundscapes, *Ben Chatwin* takes listeners on a sonic journey filled with emotion and depth. His music combines delicate melodies with rich textures, creating an immersive experience that transports you to another world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhether it's the hauntingly beautiful tracks like \"Digital Moss\" or the atmospheric landscapes of \"Worriedaboutsatan,\" *Ben Chatwin* showcases his versatility as an artist. His collaborations with other talented performers like Ocoeur and 36 further highlight his ability to push boundaries and create truly unique music.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"drone-signals","title":"Drone Signals","description":"\u003cp\u003eFeeding strings through an array of modular synthesisers, Ben Chatwin remoulds his recent \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e album into new microscopic electronic textures. \u003ci\u003eDrone Signals\u003c\/i\u003e, a companion piece to the original album, is released via Village Green Recordings. With all of the ‘Staccato’ material on hand, the task became dismantling the tracks – stripping them apart to see what was left, letting certain sounds or instruments become the focus, and then rebuilding the arrangements around them. This allowed elements to breathe, yet also to become more static. The less chaotic and more ambient nature of these pieces suggested a related album of versions, a conceptual sibling. \u003ci\u003eDrone Signals\u003c\/i\u003e might best be understood as the aftermath of \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e, retaining much that made the latter such a rewarding album – it's mournful beauty, the tense, ambiguous relationship between electronic and acoustic elements, and a delicate if not volatile balance between elegance and intensity. \u003ci\u003eDrone Signals \u003c\/i\u003ewill appeal to fans of the experimental world-building of recording artists and soundtrack composers such as Ben Frost, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Max Richter, Johann Johannsson and Ryuichi Sakamoto.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLP - 180 Gram Heavyweight Vinyl, comes Packaged with Beautiful Black and White Printed Inner Sleeves on Durable Paper Card\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Village Green","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50412271698251,"sku":"1042739","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50412272222539,"sku":"1042740","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/09bd8f1f-8e49-457d-9692-0c060abe251b_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726666488"},{"product_id":"the-sleeper-awakes","title":"The Sleeper Awakes","description":"\u003cp\u003eComposer and producer Ben Chatwin releases his new album 'The Sleeper Awakes' through Village Green which was written and recorded at Chatwin's home studio in Scotland. Inspired by the writing of HG Wells, 'The Sleeper Awakes' is Chatwin's first album to appear under his own name and follows last year's highly-lauded Talvihorros project 'Eaten Alive'. Ben makes a move away from the more textured, heavily layered soundscapes of his Talvihorros work into something more succint and melodically driven. Ben sourced a one hundred-year-old Dulcitone and used it extensively, making it sit with modern electronics and synthesis. For fans of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Avro Part LP - With digital download code.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Village Green","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50493283828043,"sku":"386729","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50493285695819,"sku":"386728","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/e43c8b5d-ceaa-4f11-ba7b-8bec64dba123_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727696581"},{"product_id":"staccato-signals","title":"Staccato Signals","description":"\u003cp\u003eWorking from ‘The Vennel’, his home studio in South Queensferry, Scotland, composer and producer Ben Chatwin creates a musical language permeated with an ambiguity, or tension, between the electronic and acoustic worlds. More than just a meeting of the two, what emerges is a daring, vivid and emotionally-charged music unshackled from a traditional sense of structure and genre. Following \u003ci\u003eThe Sleeper Awakes\u003c\/i\u003e (2015) and \u003ci\u003eHeat and Entropy\u003c\/i\u003e (2016), \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e is Ben’s third album under his own name. It’s a bolder and more ambitious record than anything he has written before, largely the result of relinquishing different levels of control over the musical process. It’s an album which smoulders with an almost aggressive darkness, yet one that is laced with melodic glimmers of light.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBen initially set out to make a purely electronic record with \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e, using primarily analogue and modular synthesisers, harnessing the unpredictability of hardware sequencers to write melodic lines rather than by hand with a keyboard. This was about giving up control to the machines – leaving them to their own devices, allowing chance and random elements to decide the direction of the music, ultimately making them more of a collaborator than a tool. However, towards the end of its writing, not satisfied with the results, Ben was overcome with the feeling that he needed to push what he had created further into new territory, in order to invent entirely new sounds and textures. He decided to work with a string quartet, exploring innovative ways to fold, bury and combine both strings and brass into his industrial, noisy and chaotic electronic template. Again, this was about giving up control – working with other musicians, allowing them to improvise and arrange parts in order to find those special moments where something unexpected happens. The writing process became a search for those moments, the short, sharp flashes of inspiration – the staccato signals. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis constant pull between the acoustic and the electronic, man versus machine, and the agile production Ben utilised to maintain their balance, is what gives \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e its powerful and beguiling character. Over time, for Ben this came to reflect the relationship humans have both to nature and technology, and the control we try to enact over our environment. Due to his breath-taking surroundings of the Firth of Forth and the North Sea, a major oil and gas reservoir, and his hometown of South Queensferry, a historic site of witch executions, interconnected themes of oil, fire, and burning burrowed their way deep into Ben’s psyche while writing ‘Staccato Signals’, surfacing within the textures of his music. Throughout the album mournful strings are engulfed by harsh, all-encompassing synths, while disorienting climaxes of blazing electronics recall the deafening loudness of an inferno. Yet while the jagged, synthesized textures that needle the album together might call to mind such deva\u003ca\u003e\u003c\/a\u003estating imagery, the acoustic instruments that feature throughout the album continuously provide a more human counterbalance.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUltimately, \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e is the product of a composer pushing his music completely past the outer limits of how it was originally conceived to sound, by giving up control over his equipment, other performers, and giving in to his environment:\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Village Green","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50497769046347,"sku":"1035802","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/d3a80693-60f4-439f-ab66-b8f195e6fec6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727732303"},{"product_id":"altered-signals","title":"Altered Signals","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing the release of 2018’s acclaimed pair of albums \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eDrone Signals\u003c\/i\u003e, Ben Chatwin returns in with \u003ci\u003eAltered Signals.\u003c\/i\u003e As the title suggests, Ben has enlisted the talents and imaginations of a host of electronic producers to reconfigure the original ten compositions featured on \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e, injecting new life into a project already seething with texture, dynamism and emotion. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHighlights include Planet Mu stalwart Ital Tek’s remix of \u003ci\u003eSilver Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, which seizes the slow-burning cataclysmic energy of the original and reforms it with the bold, cinematic crescendos that characterised his 2018 album \u003ci\u003eBodied.\u003c\/i\u003e Steve Hauschildt, who also released a new album last year, \u003ci\u003eDissolvi\u003c\/i\u003e, repurposes the alien yet organic synth sounds from \u003ci\u003eHelix\u003c\/i\u003e into a multi-dimensional blissful ambient techno workout. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStrictly speaking, this is the second ‘remix’ album of the \u003ci\u003eSignals\u003c\/i\u003e project - with \u003ci\u003eDrone Signals\u003c\/i\u003e, Ben already took the material in one direction by feeding string parts into an array of modular and analogue synthesisers. With this new album, he once again relinquishes control - a central conceptual underpinning of the project - by working with some of his favourite producers working in the electronic world. Though the music ranges from ambient to acid techno, this is nevertheless a dynamic and cohesive work that’s sure to excite fans of both of \u003ci\u003eStaccato Signals\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDrone Signals\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Village Green","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50498267971915,"sku":"1058956","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ce50591d-4caa-4c64-ac92-74a5d1073fbd_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727743130"},{"product_id":"the-hum","title":"The Hum","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen electronic artist Ben Chatwin plugged his Moog synthesiser into the mains at home one day, he was surprised to find the electrics of his home faintly singing. His house was built in the nineteenth century, and what he was listening to was the building’s natural hum. He boosted the volume, and in doing so, found the inspiration for his next release, \u003ci\u003eThe Hum\u003c\/i\u003e, out on Village Green.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Hum\u003c\/i\u003e is Chatwin's sixth solo album of experimental electronic music under his own name and his eleventh in total. It amplifies the hidden frequencies that swirl invisibly around us in the air all the time but which most of us never hear, including the 50Hz hum of the power grid that producers will know all too well from the studio, but is almost undetectable to the human ear. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTaking inspiration from Mika Vainio's physical sound worlds and Jóhann Jóhannsson's immersive soundtracks, \u003ci\u003eThe Hum's\u003c\/i\u003e emotive accumulations and caustic textures form dense stratas, with strings and analogue synths harnessed as melodic anchor points among electric storms of pulsating sound. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter discovering the drone of his home, he began extracting and amplifying as many ghost frequencies as he could from other sources to make tracks for the album. Interference includes aeroplane communications pulled from the sky; War of the Ants resurrects long lost echoes from previously erased recordings on blank tape. At one point, he found what sounded like human chorus in the signals – nobody else could hear it, so he also brought in singer Kirsten Norrie (MacGillivray) and buried her voice in the mix among the signals on Creep Strain and Snow Crash. Strings are arranged and performed by Ben's regular collaborator Pete Harvey (Modern Studies). \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBen avoided using the computer as a sound source, and most of \u003ci\u003eThe Hum\u003c\/i\u003e is completely analogue – it was mixed live and mastered to tape. This record marks a technological and textural leap in his music, as an album that is both made with and is about the hidden sounds of tubes, tape, and the air between us all. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Village Green","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50512840393035,"sku":"1103105","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/d8629644-015d-4a1a-8189-a4cbe28c59cd_thumbnail_4096.png?v=1727908134"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_e58e9269_thumbnail_4096_e9956274-7267-41a9-ba1e-a38270ac8105.jpg?v=1726666455","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/ben-chatwin.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}