This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these messages) |
Benn Jordan | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Birth name | Benn Lee Jordan |
Also known as | The Flashbulb, Acidwolf, CHR15TPUNCH3R, DJ ASCII, Dr. Lefty, Dysrythmia, FlexE, Human Action Network, Lucid32, MC Flashbulb, rnd16, 66x, Q-Bit |
Born | West Englewood, Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | October 28, 1979
Genres | IDM, breakcore, glitch, drill and bass, ambient, modern classical, acid techno |
Instrument(s) | Guitar, piano, keyboards, modular synthesizer, bass guitar, DAW, sampler |
Years active | 1993–present |
Website | bennjordan |
Benn Lee Jordan (born October 28, 1979) is an American musician operating under many pseudonyms. Since 1999, his most widely distributed electronic music has been released under the name of The Flashbulb. Other names Jordan has released as are Acidwolf, Human Action Network, and FlexE.
Jordan was born in 1979 and raised in West Englewood, Chicago, by his mother and grandparents. An only child growing up in a derelict neighborhood, Jordan became an accomplished self-taught guitarist as a child. Due to being left-handed and not having lessons, he learned to play a right-handed guitar upside down, which he continues to do. [1] He began his music career releasing instrumental music on small labels in the United States and Europe in 1996 under various aliases, most notably The Flashbulb. In addition to releasing music and touring, he began to work as a freelance composer for various television and film agencies.
As The Flashbulb, Jordan typically releases electronic or cinematic styled music. His style differs strongly between albums, but they all have a cohesive bond tied around intricate drum programming, jazz-influenced melodies, and a wide array of live instrumentation from various instruments Jordan has acquired. He also often records his melodies through MIDI-synced guitars. His guitar style and skill have gained attention because he typically plays the guitar strung backwards, and makes heavy use of fast sweeping and tapping. More recent Flashbulb albums have featured violinist Greg Hirte, who is also featured heavily on The Flashbulb's 2008 album, Soundtrack to a Vacant Life. This album is, as Jordan stated in a 2008 interview, a step away from the breakcore genre. He also said that this step is likely to be a permanent trend in the direction of his music, [2] a move that was supported by releases under his own name, such as Pale Blue Dot and Louisiana Mourning. However, the 2012 album Hardscrabble represents a return to the harder electronic music heard on releases like Kirlian Selections or Flexing Habitual. The record is named for an area in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Jordan's own Chicago.
Under other aliases, Benn Jordan's work varies quite a bit. His Acidwolf and Human Action Network aliases feature retro acid music that uses old drum machines such as the TR-808 and relies heavily on the melodies of the TB-303. Tracks made under the FlexE alias tend to be laid-back and classic acid. According to him, he showcases his more fundamental, classical, and personal pieces under his own name, Benn Jordan.
Jordan has seen much success in composing for television and film. In 2006 he composed the original score for the Josh C. Waller short The Nail. [3]
In 2006, Jordan's music ("Passage D" from his album Kirlian Selections) was featured in Dove's "Evolution" promotional campaign for its Campaign for Real Beauty website, which has drawn a large amount of attention from the mainstream media. [4] The campaign took the commercial film winner at Cannes, as well as many other prestigious awards. [5] In addition, Jordan was nominated for a 2007 London International Award for the "Best Use Of Music" category; he went on to win the ceremony's grand prize. [6] In 2008, he was nominated again at the London International Awards for "Best Use of Music," although he did not take the grand prize. In 2008 he was also a Webby Award nominee and took the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. [7] In 2008, Jordan had completed work in branding, having created stings and trademark sounds for companies such as Dove, Verizon, and others.
In July 2012, he released an original score entitled The Universe, [8] which was commissioned by Chicago's Adler Planetarium for a new interactive exhibit dedicated to the evolution of the universe. [9] In 2013, he was commissioned to score their show entitled "Cosmic Wonder". [10] [11] [12] In 2016 he composed the soundtrack to the Adler Planetarium's sky show Planet Nine. [13]
Jordan currently composes for film, television, and gaming through various agencies; he also currently owns and operates his own production and recording facilities in Marietta, Georgia. [14]
After the collapse of Sublight Records, [15] instead of taking on another contract, Jordan purchased his previous licenses and released his most anticipated album, Soundtrack to a Vacant Life, on his own record label, Alphabasic Records. On the day of its release, he personally uploaded copies of the album to music piracy sites, including a small HTML file explaining his relaxed views on file sharing and showing listeners where they could give support if they desired. [16] This resulted in attention by the mainstream press, and the album became the most downloaded album on many popular file sharing networks. [17] [18]
Jordan has spoken extensively on issues of net neutrality, free speech, and copyright laws in the music world. In an interview with TorrentFreak, he encourages involvement in these issues and warns against corporations like Amazon or iTunes and their ability to stem the free flow of information. File sharing, to Jordan, is a way of bypassing this potential oppression and accessing information freely. In the aforementioned interview, Jordan notes that "file trading is just a peephole to a much larger picture. Copyright, in its current state, holds information at ransom for monetary value. While in music it can stifle culture and art, with literature and education it can be nothing less than a weapon of class warfare." [19]
In a 2024 episode of “The New Music Business” podcast Jordan reviewed these perspectives in the context of having been the subject of False Streaming Activity and having had his music taken down by distributors. [20]
Benn Jordan was the founder and president of 32 Forty, [21] a non-profit music education center located in south Chicago. The music center (now closed [22] ), extended services to help independent recording artists with publishing and licensing. In 2011, Jordan released a large collection of unreleased music, titled "Old Trees (1999–2011)" [23] with all proceeds going to Unicef. Jordan is also an ambassador for Unearthed Pictures, a foundation dedicated to publicizing and stopping the sexual exploitation of children and funding safe houses in North America, Africa, and Asia.
In 2014, Jordan left Chicago and moved his home studio to an isolated home in Smyrna, Georgia [24] but moved again in 2024 to studio outside Atlanta, Georgia to a barn where he set up a studio. [25]
He trains and competes in mixed martial arts and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in his spare time. [26]
Jordan has a self-titled YouTube channel (previously titled Benn and Gear). [27] On his channel, he creates educational videos relating to music making. [28] In 2020, Jordan was formally threatened with legal action after posting a video about LRADs. [29]
Sean Taro Ono Lennon is a British-American musician, songwriter, and producer. He is the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and half-brother to Julian Lennon. Over the course of his career, he has been a member of the bands Cibo Matto, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, The Claypool Lennon Delirium and his parents' group Plastic Ono Band. He has released two solo albums: Into the Sun (1998) and Friendly Fire (2006). He has produced numerous albums for various artists, including Black Lips and the Plastic Ono Band.
James Yoshinobu Iha is an American rock musician. He is best known as a guitarist and co-founder of the alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins. He was a member until the band's initial breakup in 2000 and rejoined in 2018.
Geir Aule Jenssen is a Norwegian electronic musician and composer who records as Biosphere. A resident of Tromsø within the Arctic Circle, Jenssen is well known for ambient and ambient house pieces, often inspired by Arctic or mountain settings, and his use of loops and peculiar samples from science fiction and natural sources. His 1997 album Substrata was voted by the users of the Hyperreal.org website in 2001 as the best all-time classic ambient album. He has also composed several film scores.
David Grubbs is an American composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist. He was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. He has also played in Codeine, The Red Krayola, Bitch Magnet and The Wingdale Community Singers.
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles is an American crossover thrash band that formed in Houston in 1982 and would later relocate to San Francisco. The band is currently composed of two of its founding members, lead vocalist Kurt Brecht and guitarist Spike Cassidy, as well as bassist Greg Orr and drummer Rob Rampy.
Christopher Branford Bell was an American musician and singer-songwriter. Along with Alex Chilton, he led the power pop band Big Star through its first album #1 Record (1972). He also pursued a solo career throughout the mid-1970s, resulting in the posthumous I Am the Cosmos LP.
Larry Heard is an American DJ, record producer, and musician who has recorded under various names, most notably Mr. Fingers. He is widely known as a pioneering figure in 1980s house music, and was leader of the influential group Fingers Inc., whose 1988 album Another Side was the first long-form house LP. He is regarded as a progenitor of the deep house subgenre, bridging the gap between the futurism of house and the lush sound of disco. His landmark 1986 single "Can You Feel It" would be a major influence on dance music.
Randolph Isaiah "Ikey" Owens was an American keyboardist known for his work with The Mars Volta, Jack White and an array of bands from the Long Beach music scene.
Jordan Belson was an American artist and abstract cinematic filmmaker who created nonobjective, often spiritually oriented, abstract films spanning six decades.
Simon Joseph Joyner is an American singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska. He has influenced the music of Bright Eyes, Kevin Morby and Gillian Welch. In the early 1990s, Beck listed Joyner in his top 10 albums when asked by Rolling Stone. He is also known for the so-called "Peel Incident," when British DJ John Peel played his album, The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, from beginning to end on air. Joyner has collaborated with John Darnielle, of The Mountain Goats. He is named after Paul Simon.
Gabriel C. Benn, better known as Asheru, is an American rapper, educator, and youth activist. He performed the opening and closing themes for the TV series The Boondocks.
"Laisse tomber les filles" is a French song written by Serge Gainsbourg and originally performed by France Gall in 1964. The song was a major hit in France, peaking at number 4 according to Billboard magazine.
Andy Dixon is a Canadian artist and musician, who gained notoriety as a member of the North Vancouver punk rock band d.b.s. He founded the record label Ache Records, and later played in The Red Light Sting. Beginning in 2003, during the final months of The Red Light Sting, he began to cut up audio recordings he made himself and compose glitch/IDM music under the alias Secret Mommy, though he used The Epidemic for his first solo release.
Valério Costa, known by his stage names, Kaiaphas and Lord Kaiaphas, is a black metal vocalist, drummer, lyricist and songwriter. He is mostly known for his works while in the Norwegian black metal band Ancient. His current projects are Thokkian Vortex and Minimal Criminal. His name is taken after Caiaphas, the high priest during the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus.
Greg Hirte is a professional violinist, actor, and composer based out of Chicago, Illinois.
George Greeley was an Italian-American pianist, conductor, composer, arranger, recording artist and record producer who is known for his extensive work across the spectrum of the entertainment industry. Starting as an arranger and pianist with several notable big bands in the 1940s, he segued into the Hollywood radio scene, working on several nationally broadcast variety programs. After conducting an Army Air Force Band during World War II, he was hired by Columbia Pictures as a staff pianist and orchestrator. He worked as pianist on several hundred motion pictures, worked with many famous composers orchestrating their soundtrack compositions, and created original compositions of his own in several dozen movies. It was Greeley's hands that performed the piano parts that Tyrone Power mimed in The Eddy Duchin Story. Concurrent with his work at Columbia Pictures, George Greeley also worked at Capitol Records as music director, pianist, and conductor for many artists such as Gordon MacRae, Jane Powell, Jo Stafford, Frankie Laine, and Doris Day. He was hired in the late 1950s by the newly established Warner Brothers Records. George Greeley arranged, orchestrated and performed as primary artist for a series of hit recordings entitled "Popular Piano Concertos." As music tastes changed in the late 1960s, Greeley had already moved into television, composing themes and music for popular TV series like My Favorite Martian,The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,Nanny and the Professor, and Small Wonder. He performed as featured piano soloist and as guest conductor in concert appearances around the world. He died from emphysema at age 89 in Los Angeles, California.
Rhian Sheehan is a New Zealand composer and producer born in Nelson and now based in Wellington. He is known for his fusing of orchestral chamber music and piano, with ambient electronic and post-rock cinematic atmospheres. He has also written music for film, television, video games, exhibitions, advertisements, roller coaster rides, and planetarium dome shows.
Semyon Davidovich Kirlian was a Soviet inventor and researcher of Armenian descent, who along with his wife Valentina Khrisanfovna Kirlian, a teacher and journalist, discovered and developed Kirlian photography.
Aaron Funk, known as Venetian Snares, is a Canadian electronic musician based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is widely known for innovating and popularising the breakcore genre, and is one of the most recognisable artists to be signed to Planet Mu, an experimental electronic music label. His signature style involves meticulously complex drums, eclectic use of samples, and odd time signatures, in particular, 7
4.
Canadian electronic musician Aaron Funk, better known as Venetian Snares, has released 24 studio albums, one live album, two compilation albums, 19 extended plays (EPs), eight singles, four promotional singles, one remix, and one music video. Funk began producing music in 1992 and self-released several cassettes during the 90's. He released his first three studio albums in cassette. These albums are Spells and Subvert! both released in 1998, and Rorschach Stuffoacte released in 1999. He released the 1999 EP, Greg Hates Car Culture, followed by his fourth studio album, printf("shiver in eternal darkness/n"); in May 2000.