| Somthing
to many, nothing to most...what exactly is Ben Lost
An utterly pointless update by GG Allin Poe:
Ben Lost spent the best part of his teenage years fronting
a couple of glam punk bands, getting his kicks from all the
boyish perks that came with it and enjoying brief 'fame' with
some national radio play (John Peel & Steve Lamacq - Radio
One), magazine articles (The NME, Melody Maker, The Guardian
and Just 17) and a few naughty gossip column inches, courtesy
of the UK music press.
The band disbanded in 1997 as each member went off on their
own personal life missions - PHD's, philosophy, poetry and
poverty - or also in Bens case, the discovery of electronic
drug music, large dark rooms and a fooray into the strange
world of djing, something he had so far only done at alternative
club nights in his home town of Peterborough.
Initially it was the soaring synth-pop-sci-fi melodies of
trance that captured Bens imagination and an almost weekly
pilgrimage to Sheffield's Gatecrasher club in 1998, where
a gang of lovable cyber urchins, trannys and dealers welcomed
him into a period of glorious decadence with open arms.
"Growing up with 80's rock, synth pop and coked up,
synthetically emotional TV and film scores such as Basil Poledouris'
'Robocop', Tangerine Dreams 'Legend', 'Cobra', 'The Neverending
Story', Harold Faltermeyers 'The Running Man' - I was always
going to have a penchant for fake melancholy. It sounds completely
ridiculous but I honestly believe that is where the seeds
were sown. I still look out for a bit of that nasty, plastic
emotion when record shopping."
Naturally, the more Ben hung out in these neon cathedrals
of gluttony, the more he got into the music. A set of decks
were purchased a year later in 1999 and Ben started playing
records (mainly dark, germanic, film-esque trance at this
point) at mates houses and at after parties in weird northern
pubs.
Meanwhile, after a couple of years spent working in the music
industry in London, Ben was offered a job at Hooj, a record
label that he'd fallen in love with during his still as yet
brief affair with electronic pop music and clubworld.
Its here that Ben started A&Ring for the then embryonic
Lost Language label and its here that Ben stayed for 3 years,
releasing over 50 singles and cutting his name as a dj to
look out for (Mixmag Future Hero) and notching up more international
bookings than he could have dreamed of, including legendary
adventures to Japan, USA, Russia, Germany, China, Singapore,
Canada, Finland....
As Bens DJing career progressed, so did his understanding
of what he liked and looked for in music and more importantly
what he considered to be good, interesting, fun and forward
thinking music. Unfortunately, all around him he could smell
a dreadful rot.
"It seemed to me, that the music in a lot of the clubs
I was playing at and most of the music I was being sent and
played, had lost all of the balls, quirkiness and energy that
I'd originally been drawn to in dance music.
Being a little punk kid from Peterborough and still having
a fairly limited understanding of what dance music had to
offer, at that time at least, I found myself getting swept
along with a scene that was a poor imitation of its former
best. Its almost too easy when you're making a living, flying
around, partying afterwards and all that goes with it, to
make excuses, just play what that crowd knows and what you
know but it had got to a point where I had been venturing
a lot more into other clubs and other record shops and I was
getting that fresh excitement for 'club' music again, something
I hadn't felt that strongly for a while. I guess I had to
put my musical integrity before all the fun and my income
and essentially start again with a new outlook. Besides, the
only people who were still involved in that big room UK scene,
if you could even call it that, were the old cunts who hadn't
figured out when to move on and were basically just ripping
off kids, selling them cheap ideas, badly sound tracked behind
big door prices. The scene I once loved and I really did love
that first wave of loved up uberclub madness - well it had
genuinely mutated into this crass, flabby monster."
Ben quit Lost Language: "I had to make a clean break
and I'd fallen out with a couple of the artists who were finishing
off an album for us. They threatened not to let us have the
master, I don't know if its even coming out now, it was a
dreadful body of rubbish anyway, but I took this as a good
cue to hand the label over to someone who was still into it
all and so I could make a complete and honest break, musically
pursuing exactly what I wanted to pursue, even if it did leave
me in somewhat desperate circumstances for a bit."
After cancelling his remaining UK gigs, Ben spent the spring
and summer of 2005 forging an entirely new sound based not
only on his visits to Nag Nag Nag, Secret Sundaze and The
T-Bar (London UK), The Pawn Shop (Miami USA) and a handful
of back street techno clubs in Moscow and Berlin but also
a sound undoubtedly born out of a tough few months spent penniless
and practically homeless, endlessly trawling through new records,
doing odd jobs and writing a cache of songs about these strange
new circumstances he'd found himself in.
Ben says "My sets had been nodding at this tighter,
darker sound for a good year but I tried out some of the more
left of centre, niche stuff in Russia, Canada, Japan and Singapore
and they loved it. It was completely new to a lot of those
crowds and seeing that reaction made me feel confidant that
I'd made the right decision". When asked to describe
his new sound Ben replies: "- er...bleakly melodic, haunted
house, no wave, tripped out...it all sounds quite nonchalant.
Council house! Lots of industrial, electro, techno influences
in there. Clone, Poker Flat, Gigolo, Boxer Sport, Traum, Kompakt,
Crack & Speed, Turbo, Wagon Repair, Viewlexx, they're
currently some of my favourite labels. I like to throw in
the odd new wave, punk or industrial, surprise in there too
now and again. Iggy Pop, Bush Tetras, The Slits, Gary Numan,
the odd re-edit. Break up the thump as it were."
And what would you say to any critics that may accuse you
of jumping on a bandwagon
"Too many people think they can stop learning as they
get older. I'm always looking for new things and when I discover
something new that excites me, I'll obviously want a piece
of that pie too. In life you generally want to surround yourself
with what you consider to be good. You want to watch good
films, have good friends, eat good food, drink good drinks.
Surely it just makes sense to enjoy and get involved in what
'you' consider to be the best at that time. Especially when
it comes to music."
While all this was happening to Ben Lost the DJ, Ben Lost
the musician had continued writing and singing for Ashley
Casselles Ashtrax project alongside James Christopher and
a couple of guest producers. After 4 years of fights, arguments,
lots of love and wasted mornings the album is finally completed
and is due out on GU in February 2006.
"It's very different to how we ever imagined it sounding,
goth-disco - ha! It's a good document of a mainly up but
sometimes down, four year musical partnership and friendship.
And that's how it sounds. The whole mood of the album, lyrically
at least, is about finding the best in a bad situation. Whether
that's love, politics, revenge, sitting in the sun while they're
bringing out the dead, too low to miss, positive nihilism."
Now going under the new name of The Remote, Ash and Ben are
about to embark on a live tour, which on the basis of their
Bestival debut this summer on The Isle of White, is going
to be all things shambolic, energetic and raw.
"I really enjoyed our Bestival gig, although listening
back to the recording; I'd maybe rather leave it all behind,
back in the big top" Ben chuckles. "Lots of shouting,
stumbling. I threw the microphone into the audience at the
end and it hit one of the main festival organizers in the
face. We followed it up with a very DIY gig in New York. I
was sat on the decks shouting into a microphone with loads
of delay. Like a little Alan Vega karaoke goblin."
Alongside The Remote, Ben has formed another group with some
of his good friends and old band mates that Ben describes
as "an electronic, glam punk, pork rock battalion that
goes under the name of Tough Love". With more than a
handful of acclaimed live gigs under their bullet belts and
a host of big labels sniffing around, things are looking 'good'
for the little boy lost in 2006
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