Gentle Ben

For all his ease and nonchalance onstage, his unfaltering fluidity on record and articulated self-assuredness in conversation, Ben Christophers, singer songwriter and electronicist extraordinaire, isn’t the sort of bloke you’d expect to associate with the bottomless pit of writer’s block. Unfortunately for him, Ben’s block came during projects, at the end of the touring promo swirl of his debut album Beautiful Demons, while beginning the groundwork for his follow up, due for release this month, Spoonface.

“It was the most difficult process I’ve ever gone through with making or doing anything creative,” he says, almost pained at the memory. “I’ve never experienced so many difficulties writing. It was awful.

“When I finished Beautiful Demon, I’d been touring for so long, well, two and a half years… I sound like Mick Jagger, but it was two and a half years and it was never constant. It was on and off, but I was never settled in any environment in which to write or be creative in any way.”

However, once it began to come together, that was it. Spoonface was done and dusted inside of three months. Produced, as was the first, by David Kosten of Faultline, Spoonface adopted the body of an album smelted together by two schools of musical thought, namely Ben’s struggle for the archetypal singer songwriter within, and Kosten’s struggle to unleash the chimes of digital sound.

“The great thing about working with David was that he never took over.” He explains. “He let me drive the car, so to speak, so it was very much a melting pot environment. I wrote and recorded everything at home, then took it to the studio and we’d just put stuff through a sieve. The picture was there from demo form, his job was to magnify it.”

Although his one-man-band-type stage show carries the elements of traditional folk, i.e. acoustic guitar and voice, Ben’s diversion down the electronic lane stemmed from an earlier fascination. “When I was a kid, one of the things I loved to do was take sounds off records. I was about seven or eight and I’d just listen to them and record them onto a reel to reel that I had, and loop the sounds and play the piano over the top. That was my thing. I didn’t realise I was learning how to make a living.”

It was through his collaboration with Kosten that Ben learned of the true extent of electronica.

“It had a new depth to it, new methods and attitudes. At heart I’m very much an old-fashioned singer songwriter, but there is another side that sits next to me and just says ‘Shut up will you. Just twist it a little bit!’ So I have a real inner battle about things not following any particular pattern and fraying the end of every edge. It can be quite self destructive at times. David, who in fact makes sounds and twists them and burns them and does everything he can with them, is very exciting. His electronica ideas kind of spurred and provoked me into making more of them.”

In so far as his sound can be classfied, Ben has as undeniable Jeff Buckley vocal presence, all swooping tone and texture.

“I remember the first time I heard Jeff Buckley’s voice,” he relates, “I was actually really relieved. At the time I was finding it very difficult to be understood as a singer and I was battling with my voice. It’s not particularly masculine, it’s quite high, so I felt insecure about it for a time. But I don’t take a blueprint of influence from any particular singer or musician, rather it’s moments that strike me, magical songs like ‘Scarborough Fair’, the timelessness that that has to me is something that I use as an influence. The power and the strength and the spirit of some of the great singer songwriters of our time from Nick Cave, John Denver, Tom Waits; this kind of majestic beauty that they seem to possess is something that I’ve been blown away by. Then for the sheer popness, I look at someone like Bowie who one minute could write an album like Low and the next minute Hunky Dory, and looks like the coolest mother in town. That is just such a great blueprint. He’s still trying things out, he’s so innovative.”

What’s Mr Christophers planning to try out next?

“I don’t have a plan,” he shrugs, “I don’t want to be obscure or avant garde particularly. Even I’m not that into it, but I love the essence of it. I don’t have a plan, but all I want to do is to keep making records. And I want to make great records. It’s as simple as that.”

The debut single ‘Leaving My Sorrow Behind’ is released on January 28th, 2002