The Flashbulb (Benn Jordan)
Posted by: Nick Lees on 24 July 2015
The Flashbulb is Benn Jordan, formerly of Chicago now based in Georgia, and is one of my favourite artists that so few people seem to know about. Once I got into him he just became totally addictive.
Benn started out as a techno/drill n’ bass composer and to be honest I find his early works too hard to take, but from around 2005 (though not entirely consistently) his music took on a very different slant –yes there are breakbeats in there, and yes they can (very) occasionally be violent, but the style is far more a mix of post-rock and ambient, though in a very different way to other post rock composers such as Mogwai or Sigur Ros. It’s 95% instrumental with occasional and brief treated vocals, and he plays almost everything you’ll hear.
The other thing you’ll notice is that there are *lots* of tracks on his albums and you’d think that’d just be a mess, but they work together, often just segueing in a way that doesn’t seem to jar – even if the style jags from quiet to noisy.
Where to start? Well, Réunion is probably the first of the non- drill n’ bass album, though both Kirlian Selections and Red Extensions Of Me, for example, are mixed.
But I’d go for Arboreal as a place to jump off. This is the opener:
And We The Dispelled gives a fair indication of the twists his music can take – an intensely melodic and almost prog-like synth line emerging out of the broken beats.
And then, not too long after he’s drifting along…
You can listen to the whole thing and buy on his Arboreal Bandcamp page
If you like that then in the same vein are:
OK, so if you like the quiet bits but not so much the livelier parts, try his piano album – very much in a Nils Frahm style: Compositions For Piano
Or his ethereal space album, inspired by Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot, followed by a couple of E.P.s commissioned by Planetariums : Cosmic Wonder and TheUniverse.
Let me know what you think - love, hate or indifferent!