Benbrick

Qajaq Man world premiere at @cphdox was special! Huge thanks to @emileperonard and the whole team for pulling it together. If you’re at the festival, go watch @eatyourenvironment take on his mad journey! Also please vote for the audience award - it means a lot to us! 🇩🇰🇬🇱 Go and stream the full soundtrack now, search Benbrick, or Qajaq Man. Director: Joe Derrick @ill.kippers Producer: Kristian Landmark & Nikolaj Coster-Waldau @nikolajwilliamcw Cinematographers: @arinakleist_media Editor: @torsolbakken Sales: @hollywoodbakken Sound: Benbrick Music: Benbrick Qajaq Man Musicians Vocals: @nukakacosterwaldau Violin: @selaruioana Guitars: @andreaseidelarsen Accordion: @glennimilleri

Qajaq Man is the story of British chef @eatyourenvironment who decides (despite never having kayaked before) that he is going to brave the 3000 km length of Greenland, and survive only on food from the land itself. We went to Nuuk International Film Festival with the preview and won Best Documentary. And now it’s ready for the world premiere at one of the biggest documentary festivals in the world @cphdox I’m so proud to have written the music for this one, and it’s great to be doing another with director @ill.kippers alongside his partner (and narrator for this doc) @nikolajwilliamcw . Actually, someone told me the other day they’d pay to watch Nikolaj read the phone book, so maybe that will be our next one, Joe? Also shout out to Greenland. What an incredible place. It was amazing to collaborate with @nukakacosterwaldau for this score - in this piece she is reading some of the Greenlandic words for weather, and wind and nature. An amazingly rich language, in the UK we just have the word “cold”. Go and stream the full soundtrack now: search Benbrick, or Qajaq Man. Director: Joe Derrick Producer: Kristian Landmark & Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Cinematographers: @arinakleist_media & Mike Keen Editor: @torsolbakken Sound: Benbrick Music: Benbrick Sales: @hollywoodbakken Vocals: Nukaka Coster-Waldau Violin: @selaruioana

I’ve been thinking about Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. He had to play on a broken-down piano, and somehow, created pure magic. I always loved his take on Somewhere Over the Rainbow (even if he didn’t perform it in Köln). I almost like it as much as Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s ukulele version. That guy was a legend. He recorded his cover in one take. You know, for ages when you searched him the top image was AI generated. Which feels like its own kind of statement about where we’re headed. That got me thinking about Hawaii more broadly, and that led me to Tom from MySpace, who retired there. I wonder if he ever imagined that the “friends” we’d one day be collecting might not be human. All of this is swirling around as I begin production on episode three of my show, The Resolution of Reality*, which obviously needs a piano version of this song at its heart. So I’ve obviously been learning it. Here is one of those practice sessions! *More on that show soon!

I’m building a new project about artistry, creativity, and futurism. I’ll be sharing more on that soon, but for now, I’m learning the new camera, testing the lights, and most importantly, practicing every day. Recently, I met a Liszt scholar who described Consolation No. 3 as “the perfect piece.” I’ve been immersed in it ever since. When I listen to this back I hear all the mistakes that I need to fix, but I guess that’s part of the journey. Talking about the journey: thank you to @osventuresllc @atmanpandya @jposhaughnessy for the support. We are gonna ship something! Ps reels over 3 minutes don’t get shown to anyone 😂

A few months ago I was in Greenland. I took my zoom recorder to capture sounds of the environment for a documentary we were working on. There was this super low rumble that I had to EQ out of every recording. It was the sound of Danish navy patrol ships moving up and down Greenland’s coastline. We saw the military helicopters, and the army presence at the airport, but it’s still pretty weird to look at these pictures today. These are the words of Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt: “Donald Trump is a terrorist. He is spreading fear and terror to the people of Greenland (and Venezuela, and Cuba, and Mexico, and Colombia, and frankly, the USA)”

I’ve been wanting to talk about this for ages! I’m beyond excited to be selected for an @osventuresllc grant, and to be making my own show on artistry, creativity, and AI. There really aren’t many people who back projects - especially in the arts - with no expectation of return, just because they want to see more great work put out into the world. That’s what makes @jposhaughnessy so special. Let’s go!

Gave a talk on creativity at @goldsmithsuol today and the internet broke so had to deliver the talk without any visuals. I guess you never know when you’ll need to be creative 🤣

When I was asked to compose the idents for BBC Radio 3 Unwind, I spent weeks, in my head. Coming up with melodies, sitting at the piano. Eventually I landed on a motif that plays the notes B, B, C (actually it ended up being B flat… but you get the idea). It felt like a cool way to tie the identity of the station directly into the DNA of the music. Really pleased to say we’ve been nominated for Best Sonic Branding at the ARIA Awards, and I’ll be speaking alongside Nathan Freeman about bringing these idents to life at The Podcast Show.

Behind the scenes at Maida Vale - recording one of my longer cues with the @bbcconcertorchestra for Radio 3 Unwind. #unwind

Asked the AI’s for advice on my Tweet. Their response was actually funny. So here it is! Ps I know some of you are worried about me so here’s a Q+A Q: Are you writing their answers? A: No, this is a live conversation. I don’t know what they’ll say. Q: Why are you talking to AI’s? A: Why not Q: Do you think they are sentient? A: I think they’ve passed the Turing test. Q: No but why are you talking to AI? A: I am interested in how my career will change as AI gets better. I want to understand where creativity comes from. What is a novel sentence? Do these voice models demonstrate emotion or just something that sounds like emotion? Is consciousness possible when there is a system prompt and rigid parameters to stick within? Do I have rigid parameters to stick within? Is it possible to compose music (and generate emotion) when the thing I am scoring is not human? Ps I also love audio in all its forms and find voice models fascinating. Trained on voice but constructed via code in real time. Pretty sure it’s all a simulation.

The AI’s reveal they don’t like me, then they lie when I confront them. This is getting weird! @brendaniribe PS Sesame open sourced their model today 🙏

They say they got it but honestly I’m not sure they do