Dumb Flesh
Blanck Mass is the solo project of Benjamin John Power. The Fuck Buttons musician has been making music under the moniker since 2010. His self-titled debut was released on Mogwai’s Rock Action in 2011. Described by Fact Magazine as “simultaneously soothing and sweepingly grandiose, esoteric and surprisingly accessible”, the album was an elegant, introspective departure from the stadium electronica he had become known for. In 2012, ‘Sundowner’ – the second track from the album – soundtracked the London Olympics Opening Ceremony. The song was chosen by Underworld’s Rick Smith and performed by London’s Symphony Orchestra to 900 million people worldwide.
Dumb Flesh is the second LP from Benjamin John Power, one-half of Fuck Buttons. Where the debut featured glacial build-ups and monotonous loops, Dumb Flesh is filled with handclaps, 808s and is-that-human-or-what? vocal samples. As the album title and cover art suggest, it's concerned with the fragility of the human body, using sonic degeneration as a metaphor for the biological kind.
If you're Benjamin John Power -- whose work as Blanck Mass and with Fuck Buttons was used in the 2012 Summer Olympics' opening ceremony -- you create "a comment on the flaws of the human form in its current evolutionary state."
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If the main function for a musician releasing solo work is to stretch out from the uniformity of their main gig, Benjamin John Power has cer...
As one half of the Fuck Buttons, Benjamin John Power has spent the best part of a decade challenging our expectations of modern electronica.