Ben James

we did it. it’s live. the album is out.

we did it. it’s live. MADE FROM DUST AND DREAMER'S BLOOD has been released into the world. it's a peculiar feeling; a precious emotion that i hope to harness and remember forever. this project is all and everything to me, creatively it’s without a doubt the greatest thing i have ever been a part of. its narrative and direction is completely selfish. a coming of age album to which the content has spanned a lifetime. in particular it’s the writings and expressions of a early 20s human going from being free and wreck-less to being married and having a child. this is my diary. a commentary of the last 10 years. a love letter to the memories we made, to the people i loved, those I still love and those who shaped the person i have become. it may not be to everyone's liking but i hope you’re able to find something in it that means something to you. we made this. this is ours. this is made from dust and dreamer’s blood. thank you to everyone who has shared this journey with me, from the making of the songs to the making of memories that created them.

the bench [out now].

we were young [out now].

the second single off our project is out now. ‘We Were Young’ was one of the songs that took the longest to complete as it was very much sporadically written throughout the year. due to its nature it was a difficult song to write, not for any particular technical reason but more for my own validation of wanting to articulate the emotion and love that i have for my partner, my child and myself; then feeling i had adequately done it justice (there was a lot of rewrites and binned verses). the structure of this song is very much a trio of emotion. The first verse being about myself and my journey through time and growing, the second a love letter to my son from an advisory point of view and the third about my wife and my declaration and explanation of how she, and in turn they, make me feel. ‘We Were Young’ a love letter to the two i love most. this is ours. this is ‘We Were Young’. a song by Ben James and Pinkyman.

the first single from our upcoming album is out today. the inception of this song is one i will never forget, for it birthed not only one of my favourite songs but also a beautiful friendship with a human i now truly love. my dear brother Jack Ames was the catalyst of this song’s creation, putting me in a room with himself and the wonderfully talented Porteous. together the three of us sat in the studio and crafted this song from the ground up. many moons would pass before it would fall into the hands of Pinkyman who then completed this piece with his beautiful touch and magical input. a true collaboration with people i am truly inspired by, completely in awe of and eternally grateful toward. this is blind faith. a song by Ben James / Jack Ames / Pinkyman / Porteous

and then there was colour. a poem in conjuction with the release of 'Made From Dust And Dreamer's Blood' an album by Ben James and Pinkyman.

bad news [lyrics video]

my first attempt at making a lyrics video (was hell lol) for a song i made with @strugzy and @pinkyman - taken from our project titled ‘FndeF’.

Stream and download 'FndeF' everywhere: https://stream.itsbenjames.com/fndef

project credits:

music and production by Ben James and Pinkyman

lyrics by Ben James and Strugzy

mix and master by Pinkyman

can you hear me [official video]

mid 2020 i made a five track project called ‘FndeF’ with Pinkyman and Strugzy.

due to lockdown restictions we couldn’t get together during this process and made the entire thing in our homes. including this music video.

on top of that this was my very first attempt at learning a new skill and making a music video. with the challenge of making our front rooms look interesting haha.

project credits:

music and production by Ben James and Pinkyman

lyrics by Ben James and Strugzy

mix and master by Pinkyman

the butler did it.

“The fourth instalment toward ‘The Remaster Series’ come in the form of a terrifying tale from Ben James. A concept song created with the intention of making a horror movie fit inside the parameters of a traditional song. Created back around 2010 the song is now given a new lease of life, produced by Ben James himself with the help of additional production from Pinkyman.“

i remember every aspect of writing this track and the excitement when it started to draw closer to the end. i was working in this shitty call centre scribbling all these random thoughts and plot lines to where the story should go. panicking every time i went to the toilet that i’d not closed my pad as i didn’t want anyone coming across it and being like ‘oh shit - bens lost it’. it was also my first attempt at a proper concept song and not only that but was a little out my comfort zone just due to the topic haha. the last thing i wrote for the song was the chorus. it was something i had really being struggling to get it right. then one morning my now wife had left for work and when i went into the front room she had finished the chorus i had started to write with a note saying “it wasn’t me the butler did it” and the song was complete.

tear tracks to my pain.

this track was made/recorded in 2009/10 back when i went under the pseudonym ‘Knowledge’. living in our first flat. the place we dubbed the  first HQ for RawTalk. surrounded by unpacked boxed in a spare room with  a microphone in. capturing memories that rhymed with our fists.   drinking cheap wine and smoking till the early morning. this was another  of the first batch of ‘real’ songs i’d made over beats i created. i   think the 4th to be exact. Tear Tracks To My Pain is a   real song of transportation for me. I can still see the room.   unfortunately smell the air that was littered with smoke. tea and lots   of laughter amongst our struggling small group attempting to adult.

demons in disguise.

so this is the next track from this whole remaster series thing. this one is particularly special to me. the original of this was the first ever ‘real’ beat that i made in logic on my first day of college back in 2008. i remember quite literally running home and being so eager to show my now wife and my brother (BaggaBonez). super stoked over the idea that ‘we were doing it” it felt official. a few days later we wrote and recorded the vocals and ‘Demons in Disguise’ was created.

never the coward.

the remaster series.

i have recently been having a sort out of my hard drives and have found a whole bunch of recordings that took me back to a place of joy. a place of excitement. some dating back to around 2008/9.

with this discovery i thought it would be fun to open some of these files and see what they were like. they were disgusting. properly awful. clearly recorded by my 18 year old self who had no fucking clue what he was doing. one night i decided to open one of these tracks, in fact it was the project of the first ‘real’ song that i had made (in the sense that it was my own beat / first beat i had ever made). i spent the next two days completely giving it a facelift and a new lease of life and hopefully transforming it into a song that now sounds the way i/we had intended them to back when it was first made.

this has spurred on a snowball affect where i am now for the want of exercising that muscle going into other recordings that i hold real sentimental value to and giving them a brand new feel. i um’d and ah’d over what to do with these projects. whether to release them. just keep them for self. if i released them at what capacity to do so. i didn’t wanna just throw something together and call it an album. i also didn’t want it to become stressful. so my thinking is that i will carry on with the journey of selecting songs to operate on as and when they happen. i decided i will upload them to streaming services but rather than an album just include them in a playlist called ‘the remaster series’. this way it can just be a continuous process with no eventual end date. with no rules or deadlines.

i’ve never been one to look back with too much focus or need for change. but this has been super fun and enjoyable experience.

on the 23.07.2021 me and my brother (BaggaBonez) will be releasing the first track of ‘the remaster series’.

i hope you enjoy.

can you hear me [official video]

mid 2020 i made a five track project called ‘FndeF’ with Pinkyman and Strugzy.

due to lockdown restictions we couldn’t get together during this process and made the entire thing in our homes. including this music video.

on top of that this was my very first attempt at learning a new skill and making a music video. with the challenge of making our front rooms look interesting haha.

project credits:

music and production by Ben James and Pinkyman

lyrics by Ben James and Strugzy

mix and master by Pinkyman

it’s a sin.

once in a while something truly remarkable comes into existence. 'Its a sin' is one of those things. this show is laced with so much importance. so many times i felt it hit my core and ricochet down to the tips of my toes and up to the top of my head. though incredibly joyous there was almost always this lump in my throat and a weight on my chest. due to not only the beautiful portrayal of characters by the actors and the story of this group of friends but of the sheer level of injustice and persecution. the venom and hatred that people were once put under. and sadly still are. all because of whom they fall in love with. want to have sex with or even more simply feel an attraction to. from the startings of my life i have always been blessed and privileged to have shared love with extremely strong people that are part of the LGBTQ community. so often my mind set has fleeting moments where it forgets the ignorance of what is now hopefully a much smaller minority of hateful ill minded cunts that still exist here on earth. though no matter how much love and beauty my dear friends and beyond may feel. my guess is that quite possibly 100% have experienced some form of homophobic abuse in some form or another. the world appears to be moving on. i hope the world is moving on. 

“That's what people will forget. How much fun it was.”

whilst attempting not to make this self indulgent. it starts with educating. me and my son were in bed the other night reading a bedtime book. snap to. a random funny story he was saying about throwing me through someone's home. his words.

“yeah, imagine that. like if a family were eating dinner like a child and their mum and dad or mum and mum or dad and dad and they just see you fly through the room.”

my son leads me through games where buzz and woody get married. where woody and jessie get married etc. teach your children about love. not who to love. but just love.

its a sin isn’t shiny tv for the younger generations to indulge themselves in and romanticise over. its not only important for the younger generations. its for parents. for the middle generation whose older family members are still stuck with warped thoughts on love and relations.

watch ITS A SIN.

ben.

rivum (feat. Ben James) - crazy [official video]

during this ‘crazy’ time i have been trying my hardest with learning new skills. albeit to accompany my music. ha. early on during lockdown I got together with a group called ‘Rivum’ to work on some songs with them. after releasing the first track. we decided to do a visual for it with the challenge of not being together due to lockdown. for my second ‘real’ attempt at a music video i am super happy with how it turned out. i hope you enjoy it too. for those new to me i got second verse on this track.

BBC Essex / spoken word.

for those that are interested but were unable to tune in the other night here's me bit on BBC Essex. its the whole shebang. my spoken word poem and me chatting away with the host.

face for radio.