Ben Khan is the first of Noisey Debuts—an in-depth profile of a brand new artist.
“I’m not going to sit here and not answer your questions,” Ben Khan tells me, as he sinks into a plush set of upholstered furniture at West London’s Electric House. “The reason why people are saying it’s like that is because I’ve held it all back. I want to keep the music out there and keep myself to myself.”
We’re situated in a dimly lit corner of what is perhaps the most luxurious venue on Portobello Road. Portraits rule the walls while chaise lounges and ottomans litter the floor, the décor not dissimilar to a reimagining of Jay Gatsby’s mansion. A menagerie of salariats and executives pollute the interior with bubbling conversations about business while waitresses pour out expensed pints of Amstell. And then there’s me and Ben, sat face-to-face, doing his first proper interview.
The stats that precede him are huge. His first single “Drive (Part 1)”, a jaggedly atmospheric smooze of dirty Southern blues intertwined with deadly R&B, has clocked up 170,000+ plays on Soundcloud. And his second, “Eden”, was immediately awarded the Best New Music accolade on Pitchfork while also reaming in almost 400,000 plays. His music is addictive, soaking the listener into a world where soul, contemporary funk and off-the-wall instrumentation fornicate. It’s like fucking a stranger, dirty and uncomfortable, yet warming, too. Until now, this is all that anyone has known about Ben Khan.
Like many of his contemporaries, Jai Paul, JUNGLE, and Burial, Ben Khan resides in a world where Twitpics, Reddit AMAs, and hash-tagged single releases are non-existent. It would be easy to call this a marketing cliché, but, as Ben explains, it’s more of a Catch 22 in an extension of his own personality. “It’s a thing from being a little insecure about letting everyone in from the offset. It’s not really my style,” he tells me. “If you’re meeting someone you don’t just say—’Hi! Hello, my name’s Ben!’—and then tell them your life story. You don’t do that. Especially if you think that thousands of people may pay attention to you.”
It’s a viewpoint that is often overlooked, yet represents the freshness and in some ways, honesty of his approach. He won’t remain silent forever, choosing to naturally build up a rapport with his fans until he feels comfortable. “You have to open up at some point, if you have a relationship with someone it has to progress, otherwise it gets pretty boring,” he says.
Today is not that watershed moment. Fifteen minutes have passed and we’ve already blasted through several pages worth of prepared questions, Ben, politely, sidelining many of them. He’s not going to sit here and not answer my questions, but he’s not going to give me a lifestory either. I swirl the dregs of my wheat-beer around the glass, begging my next question to appear, and ponder what we’ve learnt so far. Heritage wise, as you can tell, the name Khan is not entirely English. His father is a Kashmere born silk-maker (who also contributed to the press shot above). He started making music like this about a year and a half ago, and he’ll keep his influences close to his chest because “it’s an important thing, explanation can ruin art.”
Everything that Ben Khan does is considered, from the way he’s dressed today—a puffy bomber jacket with a patterned shirt splaying underneath—to the way he treads cautiously into our battle for information while maintaining a strong degree of courtesy. This year, he’ll be putting out his debut EP, which is part of a strategy that’s been worked upon for two years, giving some insight into the centralised, strategized mindset behind his madness.
For Ben, it’s about challenging people and reaching the passive listener, those that don’t actively spend hours on Soundcloud looking for the next big thing.
“The active listeners are going out [and finding good music], because they’re active about it,” he explains. “The big industry won’t change a formula that’s working, which is understood. Whether you come at the [passive listeners] from the right or the left, if you reach them, you’re going to make a difference. It’s an exciting possibility. You could open up other people’s idea of what it means to be pop music.”
It’s an approach that is ingrained in his latest release, “Savage”, which manages to blend shutterbug synths, wonky R&B, and murky electronica into something that is extremely accessible. “If I wanted to make a pop song, it’s easy for me to examine one and see the exact elements of it, and do it,” he says. “It would happen easily and I know that there would be a market for it. But I shouldn’t want to do that just for the cash. The cash is appealing, but…”
It’s boring, following a blue-print step-by-step?
“Yeah, it’s not bringing any value. You’re not going to bring any value to the equation.”
Instead, his value lies not in vocodoring his songs to mass appeal, but in “encompassing [his] personality as much as possible into [his] music”. This personality is subtly drip-dropped into everything that Ben does, from the Salvador Dahli artwork that decorates his rarely used Twitter page, his portraiture heavy Blessed Vice site, and his self-made music videos that are built on the foundation of his love for film. The video for “Eden” unobtrusively features shots from Only God Forgives, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, and a Salvador Dahli sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, among others.
“I’m not trying to make revolutionary changes here, but I’m starting from a ground level and I want to open people’s minds a bit. There’s a lot of closed minds out there, and tunnel vision, which will lead people to a boring place,” he says. “I didn’t get in this music thing to be a big star. I didn’t do it for that.”
On the table next to us, a white-collared man is debating something that will probably make someone a lot of money. It’s the polar opposite of Ben Khan’s change-agent make-up, who tells me that his EP will touch upon “struggling with ideas of religion and concepts of our society in general.”
What concepts? “It’s a messy game isn’t it, man? It’s just observations. I’m not a politician and my brain isn’t wired like one, so, I’m not going to try and get political. But, there’s definitely things, which to an open eye, are quite ridiculous, whether that’s looking at a small country like Britain or a country like India, there’s a lot of corruption and bad things going on. That’s one large thing,” he tells me. “I’m not an activist, but I think about it a lot. And in the future, if there’s something I can do with my music to put a message across, I will.”
We’ve been talking for almost an hour now and I’ve learnt that the beauty of Ben Khan sits within the inability to wrap his persona up into one single neat sentence. It’s not about him. Instead, it’s about “the people hearing [his music], and having an impact.” It’s slightly cliché, but with everything to do with Ben, he avoids the common viewpoint by presenting something that is neither nostalgic or throwback. As he piece-meals himself out one-track at a time, his impact will soon be unparalleled.
Ryan is on Twitter – @RyanBassil.
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