Benjamin John Power – 7th Level Music

Blanck Mass releases “Starstuff” from upcoming “In Ferneaux” album.

Blanck Mass – the project of musician Benjamin John Power – presents a new video for “Starstuff” (Single Edit) from his forthcoming album, In Ferneaux, out February 26th on Sacred Bones. The video, created by Danny Perez, visualizes the track’s vibrant, erratic sound. “I have been a fan of Danny’s for years, I feel a strong connection to his use of texture and colour in an emotional sense,” says Power. “I felt that because the music of In Ferneaux is highly expressive, emotive and insular; by giving Danny free creative control of the video for Starstuff, it would only add to the experience. I always find it exciting to see how others interpret my music visually.”

Watch “Starstuff” (Single Edit) Video

The follow-up to 2019’s Animated Violence Mild, In Ferneaux explores pain in motion, building audio-spatial chambers of experience and memory. Using an archive of field recordings from a decade of global travels, isolation gave Blanck Mass an opportunity to make connections in a moment when being together is impossible. The record is divided into two long-form journeys that gather the memories of being with now-distant others through the composition of a nostalgic travelogue. The journeys are haunted with the vestiges of voices, places, and sensations. These scenes alternate with the building up and releasing of great aural tension, intensities that emerge from the trauma of a personal grieving process which has perhaps embraced its rage moment.

A blessing is often thought of as a future reward, above and beyond the material plane. With In Ferneaux, Blanck Mass wrangles the immanent materials of the here-and-now to build a sense of transcendence. Here, the uncanny angelic hymn sits comfortably beside the dirge. The misery and blessing are one.

Watch “Starstuff” (Single Edit) Video

Pre-order In Ferneaux

Keep your mind open.

[I’ll be star-struck if you subscribe.]

[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Blanck Mass’ new album, “In Ferneaux,” due February 26th.

Blanck Mass – the project of musician Benjamin John Power – announces his new album, In Ferneaux, out February 26th on Sacred Bones, and shares “Starstuff,” a single edit from the album. It’s the follow-up to 2019’s Animated Violence Mild, which “channels the horrors of the surveillance state and the creeping dread of everyday life into the most aggressive music of [Power’s] career” (Pitchfork). In turn, In Ferneaux explores pain in motion, building audio-spatial chambers of experience and memory.

Using an archive of field recordings from a decade of global travels, isolation gave Blanck Mass an opportunity to make connections in a moment when being together is impossible. The record is divided into two long-form journeys that gather the memories of being with now-distant others through the composition of a nostalgic travelogue. The journeys are haunted with the vestiges of voices, places, and sensations. These scenes alternate with the building up and releasing of great aural tension, intensities that emerge from the trauma of a personal grieving process which has perhaps embraced its rage moment.

An encounter with a prophetic figure on the streets of San Francisco presented the question of “how to handle the misery on the way to the blessing.” This is the quandary of the impasse we now all find ourselves in, trapped in our little caves, grappling with the unease of the self at rest – without movement, without the consumerist agenda of “new experiences.” The possibility of growth, always defined by our connections with others, held in limbo. Sartre said that “Hell is other people,” but perhaps this is the Inferno of the present: the space of sitting with the self.

A blessing is often thought of as a future reward, above and beyond the material plane. With In Ferneaux, Blanck Mass wrangles the immanent materials of the here-and-now to build a sense of transcendence. Here, the uncanny angelic hymn sits comfortably beside the dirge. The misery and blessing are one.
Stream “Starstuff” (Single Edit):
https://youtu.be/gF8U-dU2VWw

Pre-order In Ferneaux:
http://sacredbonesrecords.com/products/sbr267-blanck-mass-in-ferneaux

In Ferneaux Tracklist:
1. Phase I
2. Phase II

Keep your mind open.

[Why not subscribe while you’re here?]

[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Rewind Review: Blanck Mass – Dumb Flesh (2015)

I had heard Blanck Mass (AKA Benjamin John Power) before with his work in Fuck Buttons, but had unknowingly heard songs from Dumb Flesh five years ago not knowing who had created them. So, hearing this album in its entirety for the first time was a real treat because it reunited me with songs I didn’t realize were my introduction to his solo work – which I have come to enjoy through multiple albums like World Eater and Animated Violence Mild.

Opener “Loam” is a weird backwards vocal track that lets you know you’re in for something out of the ordinary. No Blanck Mass album is necessarily “normal.” They’re all soundscapes that range from strange and sometimes creepy dreams (like “Loam,” which almost seems to be the sound of a possibly haunted lava lamp) to industrial dance tracks to ambient psychedelia.

“Dead Format” is the first Blanck Mass song I ever heard, and I was elated to be reunited with it on this album. I actually first heard it when I saw Blanck Mass perform at the much-missed Levitation Chicago in 2016. The thumping electronic beats and futuristic bounty hunter synths are a wicked combination that get you moving and absolutely kill live.

The title of “No Lite” is a bit misleading because it’s full of shimmering synths that fade in and out like sunlight breaking through rolling storm clouds as wickedly subtle beats pound underneath them. “Atrophies” mixes synth swirls with karate chop-like processed beats. “Cruel Sports” would be a perfect theme for some sort of cyborg octagonal cage fight. The bass hits hard, the beats sound like metal clashing with metal, and the synths gleam like stark overhead lights.

“Double Cross” is a great synth-wave dance track that’s dark-wave at the edges with break-beat subtleties. It belongs in the next video game you’re designing or playing. “Lung” pops and chirps like some sort of alien machine. It becomes somewhat hypnotizing after a short while.

The album ends with “Detritus,” which is a wild eight minutes and thirteen seconds of what at first sounds like some kind of excavation machinery running with almost no oil in the gears. The synths slowly build, like a creature rising from a junkyard to see the sun for the first time in a century.

It’s a powerful record, and just one of many such records Blanck Mass has put out there. Brace for impact before you hear it.

Keep your mind open.

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Blanck Mass – World Eater

The name of the new Blanck Mass (Benjamin John Power) album, World Eater, could refer to several things: the Fenris Wolf from Norse mythology that eats the sun at the end of the world (the cover art – a photograph of a snarling dog’s teeth – certainly suggests this), the rising population numbers of the human race and the effects of that on the planet, the Internet, Galactus from Marvel Comics, cancer, world politics, religion, or a hundred other things. World Eater attempts to unveil this looming threat (whatever it is) to us, and he does so with fury.

Take, for instance, World Eater’s opener, “John Doe’s Carnival of Error.” It’s a little over two minutes of what sounds like an antique music box in need of repair. This belongs in a horror film score, if it’s not already in one. It’s not a carnival of terror, however. It’s a carnival of error. Our errors, both in real life and especially online, often define us. No one is given the benefit of the doubt anymore, and plenty of us like to sit back and watch the circus as celebrities are taken down, politicians stumble, and even “normal people” suffer pratfalls both physical and emotional.

“Rhesus Negative” brings in frenetic electric beats, fuzzed bass, and short, choppy samples perfect for the short, choppy way we’ve come to want our entertainment, news, and human interactions. “Please” could be Blanck Mass’ asking us to pay attention to our world be swallowed up by seemingly everything. It’s one of the brightest tracks on the record, so I can’t help but figure he thinks we can heal the world and ourselves if we have some compassion for it and each other.

“The Rat” is probably an allusion to scavengers plaguing the world with feeding off of / exploiting the poor. The beat and sound of the track, one of the best, is like something out of a future post-apocalyptic movie (but one with an uplifting ending). I wouldn’t be surprised if “Silent Treatment” refers to the way human beings tend to interact with each other nowadays. We’d rather stare at little screens and type silent words than actually look at each other and tell stories. The song is anything but quiet as it mixes in trance touches with rainfall-like synths.

I have no idea how to explain the title of “Minnesota / Eas Fors / Naked,” but maybe that’s the point. It’s chaotic and seems to come at you from several directions, and I definitely think that’s part of the message. The things that tend to gobble us up in this world come at us all the time from every direction imaginable. Perhaps Blanck Mass wants us to be naked of such distractions, and this song is a reflection of those distractions. I’m going with that.

World Eater ends with the song “Hive Mind.” We’re all nearly there, aren’t we? Everyone wants to be famous, liked, upvoted, tagged, retweeted, and shared. As a friend of mine once put it, “They all want to be individuals like everyone else.” We want to belong, but we don’t want to put in the effort of belonging to something. The song’s slick beats and popping synths keep you nodding and awake. It keeps you from falling into the hive mind.

Blanck Mass wants us to wake up and readjust. He wants us to remember that nature is truly highest on the food chain, but he also wants us to remember that we can avoid being consumed by the beasts we’ve created. This record is a warning, an alarm, and a solid piece of work – one of the best I’ve heard all year, in fact.

Keep your mind open.