Soundtrack to Your Summer:Benin City
Benin City is a collective of spoken word artists and musicians hailing from the UK who have united to offer audiences a truly unique experience. Catch A Vibe spent an hour with Josh, one of the band’s vocalists to discover more about Benin City and get a taste of some “Invisible Cake”.
CAV: Tell me about the band, you and Musa are the vocalists but who are the musicians and how did such an eclectic group come together?
Joshua: There were five of us when we finished our last EP Invisible Cake and now there are seven members of Benin City. We have a drummer named Theo Buckingham; two saxophonists Duncan and Sam Eagles; a trombonist called Faye Treacy; Jon Cottle plays the electric cello and finally two vocalists Musa Okwonga and myself Joshua Ehimwenma Idehen.
Musa and I met at the Poetry Cafe in 2005 or 2006; we went on tour as poets supporting people like Scroobius Pip, Laura Marling and Razorlight. At the end of 2007 Musa and I felt that performing with just a DJ (like your typical hip-hop set) wasn’t working for our live performances. It was particularly difficult to find a DJ that could cope with the way we delivered our material as it wasn’t metered rhythm but more free-flowing. It was a chore trying to find a DJ who could match our sound and create something that was ambitious and open so we decided to opt for a live band to make our performances more dynamic. I run a poetry jazz night called “Poejazzi” which is where I met Jon Cottle; Theo joined the group by way of an audition and the other band members we met either through friends or other musicians, which brings us to exactly where we are today.
CAV: The band is called Benin City, which is the capital of Edo State in Southern Nigeria, being that the group is multicultural why was this name chosen?
Joshua: Benin City is actually my hometown, when we first started the band, the collective of musicians was myself, Musa, Inua Ellams and Suren Seneviratne. So, one day we met and I said, “Let’s call the band Electricity and everybody was like “Electricity? That’s sh*t”. So then I said “Okay what about Benin City?” and naturally Benin City sounded like a much better idea than Electricity (laughs) and they all jumped for it and I feel quite smug about that. As you can see there wasn’t really a grand ethos towards selecting a name for the band.
CAV: I listened to your last EP Invisible Cake and the first word that sprung to mind was “fusion”. It features a spectrum of different musical styles and speaks on a variety of themes. First and foremost what on earth is Invisible Cake and what was the intention behind the EP?
Joshua: Invisible Cake actually comes from two things; firstly a video game called Portal, where you are trapped in a laboratory and you receive cake for solving puzzles and on the wall appear the words “The Cake is a Lie”. Secondly, when I was recording the track Snake Pit, there is an extended edit where I go into a rant and say “I can see through you like invisible cake”, everybody laughed and we agreed that we should call the EP “Invisible Cake”.
Benin City isn’t a commercial band so we aren’t forced to define ourselves. As a band we are constantly chasing the idea of a good sound regardless of how near or far it might be from what we should sound like. I personally don’t like being pigeonholed into any one genre, I like the freedom of being able to belt out some classical and then go straight into death metal (laughs) not that I would do that but I like the idea that I could if I wanted to.
CAV: Are you going to package your new material into an EP or an album anytime soon?
Joshua: First and foremost we are a live band and as good as the EP is I think we sound even more amazing live. Our majesty and our brilliance and grace (laughs) cannot be captured in any form of recorded media. It would be stupid of us to sit twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to come and say “Here is some money; I’m going to make you sound absolutely fantastic”. We want to create a live album with brand new material, so the plan for the rest of the year is to work on at least three songs a month and from that create the best live, brass, bass, hip-hop album in the UK ever. There has never really been a good one; for some reason other bands don’t capture the horns right and the funk is too tame. When you listen to something like the Menahan Street Band they are amazing, the horns are like claws and the sound literally chews on your ears.
CAV: What inspires the lyrical content?
Joshua: Social issues are the main focus and our material is based on the day-to-day things people have to deal with. For instance, the track Boogieman was inspired by Taking Liberties, a documentary about the erosion of civil liberties in the UK after 9/11 and 7/7. The track discusses the things the government has been allowed to get away with since these events. The idea of ID cards terrifies me; the notion that a police officer can stop me at any time just based on the fact that he doesn’t like the look of me, is an erosion of my civil rights. The way I see it, the establishment is trying to generate a culture of fear. Look at how Swine Flu was reported; it doesn’t kill any more than Cholera in the world per day but we all know how the media loves a new disease.
It’s a whole culture of bad information and bad news and that boils down to, if you don’t do what we say the Boogieman will get you. We take on a lot of serious topics but there is a tongue-in-cheek-ness to us, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We enjoy having fun with the material and this is best reflected in our live shows, there’s a lot more fun to be had when performing live.
CAV: What’s Benin City’s five year plan?
Joshua: That is hard to say as the music industry has demolished all clear paths, so we have to constantly change our outlook in order to fit in with the times and take advantage of all the opportunities that are available to us. I’d like the band to work on soundtracks; I’d love us to create a concept album; I’d like to make our performances more theatrical for example better costumes; big visual displays and I would really love to perform with an orchestra, in particular a twelve piece horn section. Ideally in five years I would like us to be a world touring band with at least three albums under our belts. I want us to be braver than we are now and to keep on pushing ourselves musically. To quote our bassist Jon Cottle, “everything else will come if you just make good music”.
Benin City is electric(ity), defiant and bold; their sound is a head on collision of funk, jazz, hip-hop and fill in the blank. If you miss their next show you’ll probably never forgive yourself. As you lay on your death bed you’ll recall the summer of 2010 and remember how you missed Benin City’s break through performance, the performance that shaped the future and eradicated war from the planet. Okay maybe I watched “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” one too many times as a child but seriously check out the YouTube click and I guarantee you’ll want to see Benin City live; if not for the music then to see what crazy outfit Josh wears this time round.
Download The Invisible Cake EP from Benin City myspace
