Line Up:Benjamin Blank Everything!
Well,Friends of Aristocracy!
We speak again of our newsroom, where in a little while, we will have in all its emotions, the interview 203 of the Aristocracy.This time, we talked to a person who is responsible for his entire project.A project that has a very cinematographic aspect. Allied to that, a cyber punk energy with a very industrial music.Another interesting detail is the approach linked to the current modern world.However, not forgetting the great nerd culture that considerably affects the structure of this work.This work was planned by the mind of Benjamin Blank and who makes the interesting British project called Binary Order and which gives us this album entitled Messages From The Deep.Let's go to a song from this album for this fantastic interview to happen, first of all, we want to thank Benjamin for this unprecedented interview in Brazil and the Italian producer The Metalist for introducing us to this beautiful project.
A1:Hi! Let’s talk about the composition work in “Messages From The Deep”?
Benjamin Blank:Sure, so with Messages my main goal with the composition to begin with was to really double down on the more metal side of my sound.A lot of time was spent on writing riffs and guitar rhythm parts. Which I would then expand with electronic elements, it wasn’t as straight forward as that across the board but I definitely had it in my mind I wanted to have an album with actual metal riffs on it. Which I haven’t really focused on too much before in my writing.Outside of that there was a conscious effort to push the electronic side and create some sounds that are new to the Binary Order sound. Tracks like The Hands of Time for example, was my attempt to write an electronic almost pop like ballad. I was listening to a lot of Purity Ring, So Below, Mr Kitty at the time and wanted to lean into that sound.
Ultimately the composition on Messages was a chance for me to take the elements of music I love, aggressive metal, interesting electronics and atmospheric soundscapes and write songs that allowed me to express my love for those. My taste is fairly eclectic and that’s definitely represented across the ten tracks I feel.
A2:What led you to give a cinematic tone to your songs?
Benjamin:I’ve always loved huge “epic” sounding songs; usually my favourite track on an album will be the one of the last which tends to be grander. So it’s something I’ve naturally gravitated towards in my own writing.I found that a cinematic tone gives a song a sort of importance to its feeling, and an urgency that you can’t replicate in other styles.Although it can be easily overdone and sound cheesy,it’s a thin line between the two that I try to walk in my own music.I think a perfect example is Zack Hemsey’s The Way. There’s a rapped verse in the middle of the song and given the incredibly cinematic accompanying music it comes off as super intense and sincere.I love film soundtracks in general; with composers like John Williams, James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer etc, or more recently with a composer like Junkie XL.
A3:The industrial brutality that you gave to your songs is admirable. But, how to find the right tone of it with the atmospheric tones that you also use?
Benjamin:That’s essentially the core pillar of Binary Order.Taking heavier metal/industrial sounds and mixing them with sprawling synthesizers and electronics.The sound I got now came about because I was finding the heavier more aggressive bands I was listening to instrumentally boring, while the electronic artists would lack that aggression or bite of a traditional metal sound.For a song like Parasite, for example, at first I had the synth sound you hear in the intro and verse. It was then about playing over that until I had a riff that worked in harmony with it. Most of the tracks would come together that way or the inverse such as Violence. Which started with the intro riff and then I added to the synth notes underneath it on the topic of Violence, the harmonic minor element of that song was actually accidental. I was playing the main riff in drop C and had the synth notes in F# minor thinking I was playing in drop B; the contrasting scales somehow ended up being G harmonic minor somehow.
However, getting the more metal side of the album’s sound took a long time.At the start of the year,I finally purchased a Kemper profiler which allowed me to access far superior guitar tones than what I had been able to use before. It was a few months,however of experimentation to find a guitar tone that I was happy with but once I did the sound of the album really came together.
A4:How and why did Cyberpunk inspire this album?
Benjamin:I’m a huge fan of the genre in general and always find myself referencing it where I can in what I create. However, for this release I really wanted to try and write music that sounded like it could exist in one of those worlds, the cliché for futuristic music is always synthwave but I find that a little short-sighted.Given that I’m mixing heavy electronics with a more traditional metal sound it helped I took a lot of inspiration in the way different styles are thrown together in various cyberpunk media. What would metal music sound like if it existed in Blade Runner or Dredd, or what would a metal soundtrack sound like if it scored Deus Ex or Akira for example?Messages from the Deep is essentially my answer to that and a way to pay homage to an aesthetic and genre I love.
A5:What warnings does man ignore in your opinion?
Benjamin:I think for me the political divide we are seeing at the moment is incredibly worrying, and very isolating. The emergence of hate groups that are politically motivated is something that will only feed into itself and cause parties to demonise each other. While the loss of nuance in critical thinking is something that is very detrimental to society,My goal with this album wasn’t to make a political statement or take a stance, but more so to express what living in this state of growing political extremism is like. We are more divided than ever before, and more isolated as a result, and we seem to be losing the ability to emphasize with each other. It’s a situation that I can’t see improving at all, and one that makes me personally feel very disconnected from the world around me.
A6:What´s the idea behind the artwork?
Benjamin:The pyramid is the Binary Order logo and it came from an irreversible life changing experience I had in Marrakesh. The iconography of sand dunes came to symbolise that turning point, and it was from there where I decided to really focus on Binary Order in the way I do now; so I adopted the pyramid as my logo.For the actual cover itself, I had the colour scheme worked out very early on and after two failed attempts at getting commission work for the cover I decided to design it myself. I wanted to feature the logo but present in a monolithic, futuristic style, something that looked part man/machine made part alien almost.
So I took the logo and begun editing hundreds of versions of it and layering them together, glitching and breaking various versions via various “glitch” apps and Photoshop until I got something I was happy with. I’ve always loved glitch art and I think going forward it’s something I’m going to start creating for every album.Once the artwork and overall art direction was starting to come together I actually realised that I was taking heavy inspiration from Total Recall. The opening credits and a lot of that film’s iconography was a huge influence that I didn’t actively realise at the time.
A7:It's impossible not to feel anxiety listening to his work. But can we believe that this anxiety also comes from his personal characteristics?
Benjamin:Yeah,they do. When I first started writing for this album I was having incredibly horrific nightmares, which continued all throughout production. The intent was to tap into these and explore them throughout the album. Hence the title Messages from the Deep which is a quote from Dune, a franchise that deals with dreams and premonitions.In trying to understand my nightmares, I found myself touching on a lot of the negative emotions I was feeling at that time that was feeding into them. Feelings of isolation, anxiety,overwhelming dread, stemming from the social unrest that we’re seeing and living in right now.So I decided to really lean into it in terms of the lyrical themes.
A8:How is Binary Order different from your previous works?
Benjamin:Before Binary Order, I was in bands during my teens but they’d always end up the same. Most of the time everyone wanted to do covers while I was trying to write songs since the day I first picked up an instrument. With Binary Order I’m finally able to fully express myself musically without any limitations outside of my own skill limit.I’ve been working on Binary Order since basically 2008 but it didn’t sound anything like it does now and I didn’t take it seriously until the mid 2010s. The sound I’ve got on Messages is what I had always been trying to create.
A9:What kind of subject doesn´t deserve to be in a Binary Order song?
Benjamin:What I wouldn’t sing about? Sex haha. Songs about sex are fucking lame, they’re probably the dumbest thing I can think about. There’s a Nickleback album called Dark Horse, and at least 80% of that album is about sex…it’s really embarrassing.
A10:How did the band know about The Metallist PR?
Benjamin:Google essentially, Davide from The Metallist was kind enough to reply to my initial e-mail and it’s been a pleasure working with him since. He’s really helped push the album further than I ever could by myself.
A11:Some literature inspire this album?
Benjamin:Yes, just before production began I really got into the Dune franchise and have been reading through them since. While the album’s title is a quote from the movie version originally the title track was called “These are ashes, and these are roots” which is a quote from the first book.The intro synth to Parasite is forever tied Feyd-Rautha’s gladiator battle chapter for me because I wrote that the same day I was reading that chapter.I also finally got round to reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep during production, which was quite the trip after being so familiar with the film it’s based on.
A12:What fears are addressed in this album?
Benjamin:It’s mostly the fear of the future, I can’t see things getting better for us and maybe I’m fatalistic but I think we’re too far gone to undo the damage and divide we’re seeing. It’s crazy that essentially a more accessible information stream such as the internet has torn us apart instead of bringing us together.It’s hard and pointless to try and predict what exactly will come next but our ability to connect with each other on a human level, and understand each other’s lived experiences is rapidly fading.I think the future will be a far lonelier and violent place for those living in it than we can imagine.
A13:Is this album conceptual?
Benjamin:Unfortunately not, no.
A14:Why do you believe that our present is strange and cold?
Benjamin:Because I read the news haha. I just look at our headlines and it’s crazy and almost surreal, It seems like every day I read a news story that’s almost hard to believe and just ridiculous beyond belief.From the Covid pandemic,the insanity of UK and US politics, all the debates about sexuality and gender we’re currently seeing, the war in Ukraine… the state of the MCU. It’s a strange time to be alive.
A15:Bandname aside, is the binarism of the world annoying?
Benjamin:The loss of nuance is definitely a problem, I’d probably say more than annoying though it’s worrying. The need to be all one way or all another is poisonous to society as I see it.