Ben Chatwin - The Hum

 

 Quite a regular work that Ben delivers almost every year for the last decade brings an immersion into the melodic soundtrack of dreamlike reality. A deep plunge into modular fantasy used as a transportation tool to infilitrate your sense of melancholy and isolation in those troubled times.

Ben Chatwin whose work for The Scottish Ballet, Company Chamelon and Alexander Whitley I knew before takes a step forward towards oscillating and deeply visceral genre that is both cinematic and bears the same sombre poetry that you could reach out and find in the work of such luminaries as Labradford, Grouper, Tim Hecker, or the glitchy aspects of Oval and dub like tension of Pole.

As he mentions himself - he avoided the software and based his set on the collaborative work with Kirsten Norrie (MacGillvray) on vocals and string arrangements made by Pete Harvey who is his usual collaborator and predominantly his hardware modular set.

The effect is both involving and quite lineary narrative. The Hum as the title suggests is a trip to the subtlety of unusual frequencies that are sometimes barely audible. It has a self-confronting healing potential that once new age music had but without the nonsense of its triviality.

A fresh voice from an excellent composer

Bandcamp link