Blanck Mass Explains How Dancing Bodies Are Just 'Dumb Flesh'
All photos by Alex De Mora

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Blanck Mass Explains How Dancing Bodies Are Just 'Dumb Flesh'

The Fuck Buttons man walks us through the creation of his latest album and his recent experiences touring.

A couple of days after the final night of his debut, three-week North American tour Benjamin John Power, aka Blanck Mass, is in upbeat mood. Hopping in and out of an Uber as we speak on the phone, he's in LA and enjoying some downtime with his mate The Haxan Cloak, who lives there.

And why wouldn't he be on good form? As one half of electronic noise merchants Fuck Buttons, Power has toured the States several times before, but this time he did it entirely on his own (apart from the company of a driver for a few east coast dates), crisscrossing the continent from New York to LA via Canada and Mexico and declaring himself "pleasantly surprised" by how it all went—despite all the air miles. "Obviously it's tiring," he admits. "The travel is the work but I enjoy the shows."

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Good job too, because he has just a week off after returning home before embarking on a week of British and Irish dates, beginning in Brighton on March 30th and taking in London, Belfast, Dublin, Leeds, Leicester, Worcester, Sunderland before finishing up in Edinburgh, near his adopted home patch in the Scottish countryside. But first, a conversation about dancing, honesty in music, and the joys of rural living…

THUMP: Did you have much of an idea of what to expect from the tour? I know you have toured the States with Fuck Buttons, but doing it on your own is a different thing.
Blanck Mass: For sure. I think it's wise to step into these things without too high an expectation, just to leave yourself some room for error, so to speak. But I've been really pleasantly surprised by the turnouts and the crowds, and also even the venues that I've been getting on this tour. It's been good. It's surpassed what I expected.

I'd like to say that there's a little crossover from a Fuck Buttons crowd here, but also there are a lot of people I've spoken to that weren't even aware of Fuck Buttons, which is interesting for me. In Europe and the UK, that doesn't necessarily happen so much. Here, there are definitely fresh ears, which for me is great. I couldn't really ask for more than that.

There is a striking difference between the two Blanck Mass records – your debut album was beatless but Dumb Flesh flirts with techno in places. Was that due to the equipment you were using, or did you have a desire to make people move, physically?
I think you hit the nail on the head with the former, actually. Without wanting to sound too heavy, everything is a manifestation of a symbiosis between myself and the instrumentation that I'm exploring. It's always a blank canvas in the first instance, and this time round, the equipment that I was exploring at the time did lend itself to something a bit more beat-driven. I think it's important for somebody creative to keep surprising themselves. My biggest fear is hitting a comfortable spot, because I want to keep things moving, for my sake as much as others.

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What was the equipment that sent you down that path?
I started fucking around with modular [synthesisers] and went down that rabbit hole a little bit. That certainly informed some of the sounds, and even more the processes. That, and also I messed around with the Elektron stuff quite a lot, which I think is super-intuitive and sounds really good.

Do people dance at the shows?
Haha, it depends! It really depends on the time of day and how intoxicated they may be, and also the place. It's an odd one, you could be playing at a festival where there are 1000 people watching and they are kind of stationary. But I always have at least a good handful of people at the front who are… animated, let's say. I don't get disheartened if people are stationary—people have parties in their heads as well as the rest of their body. If they're stood there, that's enough for me.

That's a great phrase, "people have parties in their heads"—is that how you would be at a Blanck Mass show, or would you be down the front, dancing?
Circumstance would dictate that, for sure!

What's your relationship with dance music? Do you go to clubs?
I actually don't have a huge history with clubs. My background is more in punk music so when I was younger I was going to a lot of shows and I used to play in a lot of hardcore and punk bands. So that's how it got into it all, really. The techno and dance music thing is something that I'm certainly into, as I'm sure you can tell, but it happened later on. I was more of a metalhead, I guess, in my younger years.

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The common thread with both Blanck Mass albums and with Fuck Buttons is the fact that there's a real physicality, scale and power to the sounds you make…
Yeah, it's deeply important to me. That's a big thing. Electronic music can leave you feeling cold—you don't want the machines to play the user or vice versa. I think it's important to have a live feel and a sense of symbiosis to these things. For something to feel real and organic and human, even. It's a very important thing to me that there is a human relationship between the user and the machines.

And that always manifests itself in big-sounding records?

I think so, yeah. Obviously there's a strong emotional attachment with any of this stuff. The filtration is my sensibilities and emotional attachment, and it's very important that that is prominent. Also, I don't know any other way and don't really want to do it another way.

There are moments during Dumb Flesh where I find myself punching the air because it just sounds so massive. Do you get that feeling when you are making the music?
Yeah, when I get to a particular spot and it really feels right. I can spend a lot of time trying to articulate that feeling. Obviously, the use of dynamic is very important to me. I do that though, yeah, of course I do. I want to be able to play these tracks in 10 years and have the same feeling. The feeling is very important to me.

You talked earlier about surprising yourself in the context of the last album. What's the direction of travel now? Have you been writing for the next album and playing it out?
I am working on new material and I don't want to give too much away, but there may be a little bit more acoustic instrumentation, as far as strings are concerned. But we'll see, I don't want to step into the process with a clear image. I want to give myself some room for manoeuvre and exploration.

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There was a strong theme with Dumb Flesh around the degradation of the human body, which was articulated in the artwork and track titles. How did that theme emerge—was it due to the herniated disc you suffered from?
It was due to that and other stuff that had happened as well—the passing of good friends. I wanted to approach it from a non-metaphysical angle, a statement on how we are as human beings. Consciousness and body are related but also they are profoundly unrelated as well at the same time. It was a comment on that. It's something that materialised organically, during the writing process. Once the album was complete it solidified that that was what the album was about.

So the album's theme was a result of you interpreting your own music, after it had been written?
Yeah, definitely. It's difficult to say because you spend so much time involved in a project, but the theme almost auto-writes. I didn't come into the writing process loaded with a concept—it's definitely the other way around. While I was writing the album, all these things happened around me that dictated the theme and the mood.

If you are beginning with a completely blank canvas, you must have to put a lot of faith in your own ability to create.
It's interesting, there's no wrong way to do it though. I feel like you can sense honesty. I certainly feel like I have a pretty good gauge for it. It's pretty easy to sense somebody's agenda when [one is] involved. I try to operate on honesty to the best of my ability—it's the only way I know. For me, it's rewarding to operate in that way.

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Finally, I understand you moved to Scotland recently – how much of a culture shock was that after living in London?
It was a huge culture shock but I think, in an experimental sense, it's beneficial. As I was saying before, I try to make sure I'm operating on honesty and hard work, and taking myself away from the cultural noise has, so far, resulted in some of the most honest music I've ever made. It's good to not be surrounded by other artists and nights out that might have some bearing on your creative output. It's important to me and I think it was a good move.

After three weeks in North America, I'm sure it'll be nice to go back to rural Scotland rather than the heart of London?
Oh man, it's tiny. There's a post office and a Co-Op where I live and that's it. I'm surrounded by greenery, I have an allotment. Hopefully I'm not too much of an old man but it's working out for me, that's for sure.

Dumb Flesh is out now on Sacred Bones Recordings. Blanck Mass is on tour round the whole UK as of next week.

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Chris Jones is on Twitter too.