LeftLion Magazine sent me the latest album from Ben McElroy, titled How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack, and asked me to review; I instantly knew it would be one of my favourite releases for 2022. Post Rock/Experimental Folk-a fragile, almost crumbling sound where instruments are literally falling to pieces and the sounds will never be repeated. I'm always limited to magazine reviews and so I had to contact Ben for more details on his music.
Ben, thank you for taking the time to this interview, I love the new album and just wanted to start by asking about your musical background?
I’ve been making music and recording since my teens, starting with a cassette player before moving onto a Tascam 4 track before eventually getting a computer and going digital. I was originally inspired by artists that used the studio as an instrument- like Lee Perry, Neu!, Can.
Originally I just (rather badly) played guitar but over the years I’ve learned to dabble on a number of instruments including violin, cello and accordion.
I moved to Nottingham in 2005 to study music technology at Clarendon College. Between that and my job at The Frog and Onion pub in Hyson Green I got to know a lot of musicians around the city.
I met and formed/joined bands with people from there including Apples For Faces and Seas Of Mirth and later I played in Mucus Mules and Howling Buddha.
The last 10 years have been largely taken up with being a Dad, but that’s also encouraged me to persue music as a job. Since 2014 I have performed regularly with Notts based company Handmade Theatre and I performed music alongside Notts Poet Andrew Graves for his God Save The Teen show.
I made my first solo album in 2015-16 called Bird-Stone. It was released on the Whitelabrecs label. It was quite liberating as it was the first time I’d made up music from recordings of improvisations rather than trying to ‘write’ songs. This meant that I managed to capture the feel of those early moments of inspiration which always seemed to disappear once any music has been through the process of writing. I was really inspired by the recordings of Richard Skelton and was really starting to dig into ambient music at that point and the online scene around it was/is so cool with lots of small labels, artists and blog writers all helping each other. Since then I’ve released bits on Unknown Tone, Eilean Rec and Audio Gourmet.
Hopefully we are all starting to see Covid restrictions easing but has lockdown impacted your creativity at all?
I’ve been quite lucky as I’ve had family around so not felt too isolated. My work as a music teacher dried up at the first lockdown along with theatre and wedding gigs, but that did give me more time to focus on writing.
Can you tell us about your latest album and what inspired you to make it? What other releases have you put out?
My latest album is called How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack and it’s just been released on The Slow Music Movement Label. It’s also just been made The Guardian’s folk album of the month with a 4 star review so I’m pretty happy about that at the moment. 😀
I find the process of disintegration really interesting and actually quite soothing. There’s a oneness to it.- something every living thing will return to at some point and mingle together. I’ve tried to convey this in various ways, helped along by the knackered ness of some of my equipment!
I try to keep things a bit rough and scrapey and do my best to resist the urge to make things too neat and tidy! It feels more alive that way and hopefully more relatable.
I quite like involving technology in the process and my process is, in some ways, more akin to electronic music than folk music- at least once it’s recorded. I try to make it not too shiny though- in the way Star Wars is futuristic but it’s often old and battered and rusty. It's really exciting at the moment as there seems to be lots of like-minded people making experimental and forward thinking folk-inspired music. The Slow music movements Future Folk compilation highlights this really well with some great artists like Alula Down, Brona Micvittie, The Howard Hughes Suite and El Conejo. Some other artists I'm really enjoying at the moment include Haiku Salut, Laura Cannell and Nick Jonah Davis.
Are you performing live at the moment and where can folks hear your music?
The last solo gig I played was on a roadblock at an Extinction Rebellion protest in London back in 2019. It started with people meditating and ended with the police shutting it down!
Live is necessarily a bit different to recorded stuff as I can’t as easily overdub myself! I do what I can with laptop and various instruments- gigs have been a bit thin on the ground recently but I’d be up for doing some more at some point.
Online I’m pretty easy to hear via Bandcamp or most streaming platforms.
Can you list your social media links?
What's next for you?
I’ve just started doing a project with a U.S pianist/composer who writes under the moniker A Spot On The Hill. Early days but I’m quietly excited as his playing seems to compliment mine so well.
I’m quite open to doing some more collaborations too, with other musicians and possibly with visual artists… make a bit of a change to my usual hermetic methods!
I would also like to do a bit more live stuff in the next couple of years but need to work on my set first! Some folk festivals would be lovely as long as I’m not too un-trad for them!
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