Email:
ben <at> bencraven.com
Snail Mail:
Desert Comb Music
PO Box 431
Albany Creek, QLD 4035
Australia
I’m a songwriter/musician/producer from Brisbane, Australia. In other words, I’m whatever I have to be to record and put out my own music.
Two years ago I released my debut album, Two False Idols, under the name of Tunisia. I described it as “cinematic rock”. Phil the marketing bloke called it “progressive singer-songwriter”, which was even better. It came out on my own label, Desert Comb Music, and was physically distributed by Cargo Records across Europe. It’s also available on iTunes just about everywhere.
Two False Idols was a lush, layered affair with all manner of guitars, vocal harmonies, splashings of orchestra, and loads of echo. As if I were a rock act thirty years into its career, now doing whatever the hell it wanted.
As I worked the album it became painfully obvious that the music business was in the midst of a sea change, and most of the old guard didn’t seem to realise they were the cause. Last year I took an anti-DRM stance and released the live Tunisia EP Under Deconstruction as a high-quality free download. It’s still going strong at http://www.tunisiafree.com.
And I’m stepping out from behind the Tunisia moniker.
So now Ben Craven is working on two albums concurrently. One of those is the immediate follow-up to Two False Idols, now titled Great & Terrible Potions. In best progressive tradition, it’s increasingly musically complicated and pretentious – which is great – but to stay sane I’ve also had to start working on a simpler laid-back album (kind of what Friends was to Smile if you know what I mean).
I’m planning to feature audio demos, studio works-in-progress and live rehearsal snippets from both projects in upcoming blog posts, so please check back regularly and tell me what you think. But just as importantly, this blog is my attempt to rediscover the magical atmosphere that surrounded the creation of Two False Idols. That is, the joy of actually making music, and the prospect of getting it out there, with a healthy disregard for the increasingly irrelevant music business which gets in the way.