Music
Press
This band has no press
Discography
NEW MUSIC: digital album, Jun 2011
http://benseretan.bandcamp.com/album/new-music
NEW SPACE: digital album, Feb 2012
http://benseretan.bandcamp.com/album/new-space
IN TWO: LP, edition of 250, June 2012
http://intwo.bandcamp.com
Photos
Bio
Ben Seretan grew up in southern California, spending a lot of time stuck in traffic blasting late 80s punk and eating avocados.
He drifted east for school, landing at notorious Wesleyan University, a school notable for both its avant garde music faculty (Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton) and its indie darling alumni (MGMT, among others, come to mind).
Later, after a brief stint living in rural Missouri, Ben moved to Brooklyn to play with Duchampion, a mighty post-hardcore quartet started back in school (http://duchampion.bandcamp.com). Eventually circumstances got the better of the band, the members found themselves in different cities, different countries. This is when Ben began to play alone in earnest.
Using the knowledge and the same electric guitar deployed in Duchampion, Ben endeavored to fill the space of a rock band with his voice and a single electric guitar. The amps grew louder, the tuning became wider and lower, his voice sailed into the heavens.
His first solo album, NEW MUSIC, documents this new frontier. Recorded entirely live in half a day, NEW MUSIC is raw, intimate, and unlike much other music. Pop melodies meet ultra repetitive finger picking, reworked hymnals collide with drones and stabs of noise.
His second album, NEW SPACE, is a more drone-oriented counter-part. As Ben has said before, "The first record was about carving space, this record is about filling it." Again recorded live in half a day, NEW SPACE makes use of two delay pedals, a giant SUNN amp, and the deterioration of repeated language. The recording also includes an a capella Hank Williams cover.
His latest project is a collaborative LP with Portland, OR band the Early. Somewhere along the lines of Bob Dylan & the Band or Jay-Z & Kanye West, Ben Seretan and the Early carved out an album of 8 songs over two weeks last Thanksgiving. The result is "In Two," available at intwo.bandcamp.com.
In August of 2012, Ben will participate in the Wassaic Project's residency program, focusing on composition for banjo.
Ben is also the composer-in-residence and a regular contributor to bfbifocals.com.
Links
