Album Notes

What do you want to know?

Build Buildings is Ben Tweel, musician, scientist, philologist. Ben was born in Columbus, OH, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. Under the name Build Buildings, Ben makes music with computers, instruments, household noises and records.

Comparisons to artists such as Four Tet, Opiate, Dub Tractor, Matmos and Nobukazu Takemura can only go so far, because Ben crafts songs that are completely unique yet immediately familiar. He creates a broad sonic palette from scratch: every synth has been painstakingly distilled from organic instruments and samples and every rhythm has been intricately assembled from household sounds, self-designed drum patches and random noise.

'There Is a Problem with My Tape Recorder,' the third Build Buildings release, stakes out fresh turf far from the standard electronic music landscape. In the course of the album, Ben manipulates regular instruments to unrecognizable yet friendly ends, and puts familiar sounds in new contexts to extract their musical cores. From the watery synth melody of "Servo" to the poppy, robot-friendly blips of "Microliters" and the drone-powered second half of "Mackerel Scout," immediate arrangements and delicate beats still manage to leave space for external ambient sounds to filter in and play with the music. The deeper you venture into the album, the more apparent it becomes that you have not heard this before, as an internal logic to the album grows after repeat listens. Equally suited for listening to at low volumes as pulsing loudly through headphones to notice the details that emerge on each listen.

"Beautiful deep music!"
-smart-music.net

"...music to accompany the slow accumulation of dust in corners, the passage of clouds across windows and the gentle exertions of the coffeemaker working away in the kitchen. ...recommended listening for agoraphobics everywhere."
-the WIRE

"Fascinating. ...a disc that can make us all remember the first time we heard music like this, when we realized that all of our previously imagined restrictions on music composition had been blown away, forever."
-Splendid Magazine