Levin, Ben - Freak Machine
SKU
BK 003
"This is the most pretentious thing I've ever listened to. But it's so fucking awesome I don't care at all. "
Ben Levin is the guitarist in Bent Knee. This is his solo release.
It features 3 members of Bent Knee and here is its story:
Ben Levin - Guitar
Courtney Swain - Voice
Josh Friedman - Keyboards
Chris Baum - Violin
Tyler LeVander - Drums
Jed Lingat - Bass
Brothers Lumpy:
Ben Wallace-Ailsworth - Percussion
Gavin Wallace-Ailsworth - Percussion
String Quartet:
Chris Baum - Violin
Jonathan Cannon - Violin
Abby Swidler - Viola
Trevor Jarvis - Cello
"On Freak Machine, the genre-bridging progressive rock ensemble Ben Levin Group offers a jarring musical portrait of a man’s experience as his brain destroys itself. Inspired by the irrational turmoil brought on by unrequited love, the group draws from a vortex of seemingly disparate influences that weave together and fire off like neurons during an emergency. Freak Machine is a kaleidoscope of raw sound and emotion; an experimental journey into the mind of a sexually frustrated suicide victim.
Composer and guitarist Ben Levin has been writing long-form works since 2010’s Pulse of a Nation, each piece continuing to escalate in scope and scale. Freak Machine, a four-movement, thirty-five minute epic, was composed over the course of a summer in Boston. Levin had just auditioned for Lady Gaga, learning her entire repertoire in the process. Dance music ensnaring his subconscious, the project was initiated as a way to pull the genre out of his head. As the writing progressed, however, the work became much more than just an ironic poke at pop, and by its completion, Freak Machine had transformed into an unsettling personal archive of love and obsession.
There’s a powerful dichotomy between the euphoria and unbearable pain of infatuation, and Freak Machine encapsulates these opposites brilliantly. Its beauty lies in its directness, offering an extreme anecdote for rejection without being weighed down by the grace and wisdom of atonement. The album is by turns crude and elegant, examining the madonna/whore paradox and the suffocating pettiness of an unfulfilled life in vivid technicolor."