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Music

Blanck Mass Cruises On Automatic

When he's not busy pushing your Fuck Buttons, Benjamin Power crafts intricate, captivating smooth electronica.

Blanck Mass is Benjamin Power, also one half of universally esteemed electronic duo, Fuck Buttons. He recently released a two-track twelve-inch, White Math, on Software Label, which has been releasing a steady stream of exceptional electronica this year. White Math is tightly crafted and captivating, a smooth ride into a dimmer world, though one not entirely bleak and also not entirely ours. The intricacies define the experience here, more so than on Blanck Mass' eponymous debut record. You have to submerge yourself in these tracks and feel out their stories. This isn't in any way a chore—it's not "difficult" music—just give it decent headphones and a little space and you'll sink in beautifully.

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I caught up with Benjamin recently at his studio in East London, where he and his Fuck Buttons partner, Andrew Hung, have been working on their new record.

How’s the new Fuck Buttons record coming along?
It’s taking some shape now. We’ve had the tracks written for a while, but for one reason or another, we had to put recording on hold, and then we had to put mixing on hold, but we’re mixing right now and it seems to be going pretty well.

I heard you started out as a noise act?
Well, Fuck Buttons started off as a noise band, but I did plenty of things before that. I was in a punk and guitar-based bands when I was younger. I guess it’s a pretty vague term.

Well, I was thinking particularly about the similarities between noise music and your music in that they both demand your full attention. They’re both very immersive.
Yeah, immersive is the right word I guess. I like the all encompassing nature of that kind of drone.

Do you find it easy to switch between working on your own and with Andrew?
The one rule we had when we first started Fuck Buttons was that it wasn’t going to be Fuck Buttons if both people weren’t in the room. If we’re not together and I’m writing music, then it’s Blanck Mass.

I read that you’re writing all the time, so do you know as soon as a fragment of a track pops into your head which project it will be for?
Not really so much, because that’s the rule that I’ve just kind of set myself, and I write music all the time. I write as soon as I wake up, so that automatically becomes Blanck Mass.

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Is there anything you have planned for all this Blanck Mass material?
Not really. I’ve got an album’s worth of material, or things that could be EPs, or could work in a gallery space. It’s quite a nice position to be in, as I’ve got time to pay attention to the minor details.

White Math/Polymorph sounds more mechanical in contrast with the more natural sound of the LP, and the track names seem to reflect this. Was there an intentional change of theme between the Blanck Mass record and the twelve-inch?
It wasn’t like I decided I was going to make something that was more machine-sounding, but I feel like I was using new instrumentation and new equipment and they had pretty interesting drum sounds. The process is still exactly the same. I build up the track 'til it’s at its very fullest and I loop this and I structure either side, and this is exactly what I did with the first record, so there’s no beat presence. The tools were different, but the process was exactly the same.

So it was all by feel?
The tracks even tend to write themselves to an extent. Things seem to naturally need to come in at certain places. I do, to an extent, start off with a chord sequence or a texture, but they filter through my ear and personal preferences.

Sort of like automatic writing?
It’s obviously driven by my subconscious, but nothing silly, nothing metaphysical, so yeah, it is like automatic writing in a sense. I know what I like and this just comes out in that way.

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What do you mostly listen to?
A lot of soundtracks, a lot of Morricone and that kind of thing. I think that probably fed into the first record to an extent. I heard that Vatican Shadow the other day, he’s pretty good. He’s on Blackest Ever Black, that’s a good label.

Would you ever do a soundtrack?
I’d love to. I think in my writing process there’s a really strong sense of narrative. The ebb and flow between parts of tracks and tracks themselves is really important to me.

Is that why you don’t have many videos? Do you want people to be able to find your narrative or their own instead of handing them one?
Yeah, that’s pretty true actually with everything I do; I don’t like to force mental imagery on anybody. It can be much more personal if, first of all, there’s no vocal stimuli and then if there’s no visual imagery. With the Blanck Mass records, the sleeves are quite stark and there’s not really too much of an aesthetic to be forced upon anybody.

When you finish something, do you have a really strong desire to get out and play it live, or do you just feel you need to to support it?
I really love playing live. Back to the narrative thing, that even extends into the set. I feel like even with my set list, there are segues that I have for if I do want to play certain things at certain points, so there are improvisational elements, but the majority of the time it does take a bit of planning, as the whole voyage is a really important thing to me.

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Do you play much additional material to what’s out there already?
I think it’s half released stuff and half stuff people won’t have heard.

Cool. How have the audiences been?
Really good, but I think it polarizes to a degree.

Do you look at what people are doing in the crowd, then?
In Blanck Mass, I’m facing them, but you can never take someone’s expression at face value. Somebody who looks bored might be having a great time inside their head and someone who's dancing might be really fucking drunk and think they’re listening to LCD Soundsystem.

It seems like electronic musicians are experimenting a lot more with how they create experiences live rather than just playing tracks in a club environment at the moment.
That’s true. Technology has certainly opened that up to people. Also anybody can be an electronic musician now, can’t they?

For better or worse.
There’s a shit-ton of them out there, so it’s an interesting time.

Electronic music—yours in particular—does seem to reflect our time more effectively.
I think so. I certainly find electronic music a lot more interesting than the guitar bands you see knocking about these days.

I think that’s been the case for a while. In London, especially, guitar music seems really stagnant.
Yeah, I’m not sure what that is. People don’t seem to really want to change too much drastically over here, but also saying that, there is plenty of stuff. It just seems to be hidden away a little bit more.

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Blanck Mass Live at XOYO in London on 19th October
Buy Tickets: http://www.tickettailor.com/checkout/view-event/id/5401/chk/5f49
Event: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/274951782609859/?fref=t

Then you can see him on tour with Sigur Ros next year:

FEBRUARY 2013
13th - Porto, Portugal - Coliseum
14th - Lisbon, Portugal - Campo Pequeno
16th - Barcelona, Spain - Sant Jordi Club
18th - Venice, Italy - Pala Arrex
19th - Milan, Italy - Mediolanum Forum
21st - Amsterdam, Holland - Heineken Music Hall
22d - Berlin, Germany - Tempodrom
23rd - Munich, Germany - Zenith
24th - Basel, Switzerlad - St Jakobshalle
26th - Brussels, Belgium - Forest National
27th - Paris, France - Zenith
28th - Lille, France - Zenith

MARCH 2013
2nd - Glasgow, UK - SECC
3rd - Manchester, UK - The Apollo
4th - Manchester, UK - The Apollo
5th - Wolverhampton, UK - Civic Hall
7th - London, UK Brixton Academy
8th - London, UK Brixton Academy
9th - London, UK Brixton Academy

@suzeolbrich