Chatwin, Ben

When electronic artist Ben Chatwin plugged his Moog synthesiser into the mains at home one day, he was surprised to find the electrics of his home faintly singing. His house was built in the nineteenth century, and what he was listening to was the building's natural hum. He boosted the volume, and in doing so, found the inspiration for his next release, The Hum, out on Village Green on November 6th . The Hum is Chatwin's sixth solo album of experimental electronic music under his own name and his eleventh in total. It amplifies the hidden frequencies that swirl invisibly around us in the air all the time but which most of us never hear, including the 50Hz hum of the power grid that producers will know all too well from the studio, but is almost undetectable to the human ear.

Ben makes a move away from the more textured, heavily layered soundscapes of his Talvihorros work into something more succint and melodically driven. Ben sourced a one hundred-year-old Dulcitone and used it extensively, making it sit with modern electronics and synthesis. Available on Cd and 180g vinyl with download code.

Chatwin, Ben: Drone Signals [CD]