Electronic Press Kit

Ben Haviour Portrait — Photo: Antje Taiga Jandrig

ABOUT

Ben Haviour is an artist, composer and audio specialist based in Weimar and Berlin, Germany, producing electronic and post-classical music for the stage and multimedia productions. Since 2015, he has released on various international labels such as: analogsoul, his own imprint Alien Allies, Traum Schallplatten, RFR, Miracle Music, Bad Bat Records. His music is published by Kick The Flame and has been licensed for film and television.

On his new album Half Light, he explores contemporary production techniques that combine string instruments with synthesizers, digital processing, convolution and field recordings. Moody, cinematic chord structures provide a lush foundation from which tape-loop melodies echo through a world of textural ambience.

His work for public broadcasters - SWR, WDR, DLF Kultur, MDR Kultur, ZDF, RTL+, Tele5 - has brought him together with artists including: Friedrich Liechtenstein, Liam Byrne, Jakob Vasak, Oh No Noh, Sweet Potato Gentleman, Johann Niegl, Valerie Hartling, Samuel Kraft and Jakob Eisenberg.

Melancholy Rave

His debut album "Melancholy Rave" was funded by the Initiative Musik gGmbH with a substantial five-figure sum.

New Album "Half Light" in the making!

Half Light takes its name from a tipping point: the moment when contours soften and the eye starts to guess. The album translates that threshold into sound - piano and string figures undercut by electronic texture, swallowed by it, released again. Somewhere between post-classical restraint and grainy ambient, the music breathes rather than advances: motifs return altered, harmonies dissolve into noise and silence carries the same weight as sound.

The aesthetic is deliberately analogue - tape saturation, halation, vinyl noise and grain; the sonic language of an overexposed Super 8 frame. These aren't miniatures but spaces you step into.

The material extends beyond the record: as an audiovisual live show (taking found footage or self-shot material in collaboration with award winning director Anika Mätzke) and as a spatial reinterpretation through performance with instrumentalists (Viola, Drums, Double Bass). Each concert is different, as we improvise in parallel and in interaction with the musical material. Half Light is less a finished release than a work that reformats itself according to the room it enters.