Part 1

Name:Ed Bennett
Nationality: Irish
Occupation: composer
Current Release: Strange Waves on Ergedos
Recommendations: De Tijd, by the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Beautiful, transcendent music, this piece still makes me happy / Agnes Martin, she created works of great beauty and calm which are utterly distinctive.

If you enjoyed this interview with Ed Bennett, read more about him on his website edbennett.co.uk

When did you start composing - and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I played bass guitar in bands as a teenager, playing all sorts of different music from punk rock to jazz and country and even a short-lived stint with an Elvis impersonator.  I think my first compositions started to take shape then as I started to tire of playing other people’s music. I felt I had something else to say. I got myself a little four-track recorder, one of the old cassette tape ones and started to make little pieces. I would wander around the part of  Northern Ireland where I lived by the sea and record things in the environment and then take them back to my little bedroom studio and mix them together. I would use my bass, synths, drum machines, effects or whatever else I could get my hands on. I didn’t know it at the time but I was making a kind of bedroom music concrete (although I had never even heard of music concrete at that stage).

Sometime after that a new music course started at my local college and most of the teaching at the time was done by composer Brian Irvine. Brian was hugely inspirational and supportive and introduced me to a whole world of weird and wonderful music, I learned a lot of technical skills there that I didn’t have. I owe Brian a lot and his colleague Willie Maxwell who started the course and gave untrained folks like me a chance.

For most artists, originality is preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you: How would you describe your own development as an artist and the transition towards your own voice?

I’m suspicious of the whole notion of having a voice. Sometimes people tell me my work has a distinctive sound, but I’m not sure how I feel about that. I just write music and I’m drawn to certain ways of working or certain sounds and how to put them together. I guess a voice can be just exposing your limitations as much as anything else and I certainly have plenty of those. When I was starting out I was copying many people, all different types of music and I suppose eventually some of that sticks and forms its own kind of mutation which sounds like something! It’s a difficult concept but I try not to think about it too much and that pressure seems less as I get older. I don’t care if people think I have a distinctive voice or not, the work speaks for itself and is what it is. There is a lot of hype written about music, including my own sometimes, then you hear it and it’s perfectly normal! Normally it is the idea or the image that is being sold rather than the work itself. There is a lot of hyperbole. I try to avoid dogma as well or cliques, there is so much fantastic work everywhere when you look for it.


How do you feel your sense of identity influences your creativity?

I grew up in Northern Ireland so my sense of identity is also a complex thing, I’m not entirely sure what it is. Many people have heard of NI for all the wrong reasons but it’s a beautiful place with beautiful, kind and creative people. I think growing up there during the troubles definitely influenced my creative development. A lot of culture there persisted despite the constant threat of violence, some of it even thrived under those conditions. I think creative people there are even more driven to make things, as the act of creativity is such a positive response to the destructive action of others, a kind of defiance. If there is something of my identity here, it is this, we won’t take the crap life you are inflicting upon us, we’re going to make and do fantastic and better things. We also weren’t spoilt culturally like many of the more conventional city hotspots, many artists wouldn’t come here back then, so when they did you made sure you were there, absorbing everything and delighting in it.

What were your main creative challenges in the beginning and how have they changed over time?

Definitely a lack of technical ability was a big one. I needed to learn a lot and I started relatively late compared to most musicians and certainly to most composers. I suppose I am largely self-taught but I suppose to varying degrees every artist is. The creative challenges don’t stop, that’s the thing, if they stopped you wouldn’t need to do it any more, you would have solved the problem and you could put your feet up and be very pleased with yourself!

Time is a variable only seldom discussed within the context of contemporary composition. Can you tell me a bit about your perspective on time in relation to a composition and what role it plays in your work?

Well it’s certainly something I think about. When I make a piece, it’s important to know the sort of duration I’m working with and then I can get a sense of how the music will behave in time. If things are changing rapidly and dramatically in a piece then the feeling can be that you are constantly moving forward quickly, or perhaps that time is starting and stopping, speeding up and slowing down. In much of my recent music I think I have been trying to create a timeless, endless quality but in a music that subtly moves forward as well. For example, in this new record ‘Strange Waves’ I was obsessed by the rhythm of waves, the constant overlapping and repetition of them but without a real beginning or end. It’s hard to describe, but I think most people would know what I mean when you actually sit down on a quiet beach and just listen to waves lapping on a shore, it is a universal thing. There is this timeless quality, no repetition is ever the same but it sort of is, it’ll keep going long after I’m gone.


How do you see the relationship between the 'sound' aspects of music and the 'composition' aspects? How do you work with sound and timbre to meet certain production ideas and in which way can certain sounds already take on compositional qualities?

It’s all the same really. Sometimes for me the act of composing is just about finding a sound, whatever that may be. It sounds a bit weird to say it but if I give an example again from this new record, often there are parts where you have eight cellos all playing more or less the same thing in a similar register, maybe slightly out of sync with each other or something. There’s a strangeness to that sound that I am looking for and I only really know after quite a lot of searching what that sound is, maybe like a particular colour in a painting that you spend ages trying to mix. Traditionally you would be taught to make all the parts do something different, to contrast more and that’s fine, but I’m looking for something more distinct I think. I love it when you hear an ambiguous sound, say a combination of instruments and you just can’t figure out what exactly is going on there, there is a oneness to it. I love that and that makes finding the sound half the battle, then I might start figuring out how to structure it or perhaps it will be enough on its own. It’s not the same for every piece of course.


Collaborations can take on many forms. What role do they play in your approach and what are your preferred ways of engaging with other creatives?

I pretty much always collaborate with the musicians I work with on some level. I think the most satisfaction comes with working repeatedly with people and developing a relationship over time. For example, with Kate Ellis who performs the new record. Kate and I have worked together for years now on different projects and ‘Strange Waves’ was written specifically for her, I could really hear her playing it before I even wrote it, when it was still a concept. It’s similar with my partner the pianist Xenia Pestova Bennett, I’ve written many pieces for her and developed the works alongside her, regularly getting feedback that influences the work. For many years I have worked with my own ensemble Decibel and working with that band and that same core group of performers definitely shaped the music I write. I’m not happy to be a composer who just writes for anonymous groups, I need to feel I’m part of it beyond the writing. I think it comes from my early experiences playing in bands etc, I always feel I need to be part of the band.


Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

I try to stick to a routine when possible but it’s not always that straightforward! Most days, first thing in the morning I try to look after myself. I meditate and then I go for a run. I’m big into running and it gives me a clear head to start work. Then I go to the studio and normally do composition work for around four hours, sometimes I compose into the afternoon as well if a deadline is approaching, but I try to keep the mornings for the more creative work and the afternoons for admin and other activities. If I leave creative work until later in the day too many other things creep in. I teach composition as well and I try to keep that as much as possible to the afternoons. I also love going to gigs, to hear what other people are doing, it’s important for me to feel part of something and be inspired by other musicians.