A Chat with Ben Freeman (02.09.2022)

OSR: You have had a very interesting journey that has led you to music, but what was the moment when you knew you wanted to make music?

Freeman: I made my first EP, Providence, in a flurry of heartbreak back in 2015. That experience clarified that I could make music and that I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t for another few years that I arrived in a place of wanting to make music in a sustained way and building the infrastructure to support myself in doing so. The first summer of the pandemic, which coincided with my 30th birthday and my graduation from a master’s program I had really struggled with, became the context where a lot of other things that had previously seemed important fell away and I was able to get real with myself that this is what I wanted to do.

OSR: Your first full-length album Quiet Fury captures a pivotal moment of your musical journey. Can you tell us more about this moment and its overall influence on the album?

Freeman: I had been writing most of the songs that make up Quiet Fury slowly over the course of the preceding three years when, during that first summer of the pandemic, I arrived in a new city where I had originally intended to work on music with a friend who is a skilled producer. For a variety of reasons, it became clear that working with me on this project wasn’t something he had the capacity for at that time, and initially, I felt really down and helpless. I didn’t believe that I could make enough inroads in the art of production to even start something, much less produce the majority of an album. I was lucky that my partner convinced me to sign up for an online class with the YouTube-based producer Andrew Huang, which ended up being a transformative experience. I started producing this album in that class and worked upward from there.

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OSR: The sound of the album is quite expansive, yet there is a touch of experimentation within its core. Is this something you actively worked to achieve or did it happen organically?

Freeman: Mostly organically. For better and worse, when I sit down at the piano I write mostly by instinct, which sometimes means that I end up with a 5 or almost 6-minute song that definitely has pop sensibilities in its DNA, but is also very musically adventurous in terms of harmonic sensibilities and/or structure. I’ve come to see this as one of my strengths as a songwriter, but it’s also something I’m still learning how to wrangle as I work toward streamlining and focusing my sound in future releases.

OSR: This album is not only your first full-length release, but it is your first as a solo producer. What was the biggest challenge you faced producing it?

Freeman: Carrying the torch for the project by myself, and learning how many pieces of putting an album together and sharing it (organization and communication with collaborators, cover art, promotion, etc.) have very little to do with the music itself. I’m really glad that I took myself through this process; it was unbelievably instructive. I’m excited not to solo produce again, at least for a while! There’s such a gift in building relationships with people you trust and that trust you who specialize in what they do. I’m excited to focus in future releases on just honing the songwriting, vocal performance, and my instrumental pieces.

OSR: Through the music of the album, you take listeners on a journey to finding peace within and a sense of freedom. Is this what you were hoping to achieve with the album?

Freeman: That’s a beautiful way of describing what I was trying to do. Thank you for putting it into those words!

OSR: Each track has its own introspective touch, but is there one that is more personal to you than others?

Freeman: That is hard to say! If I had to choose, I’d say it’s one of two tracks. ‘The Wind, So Long Awaited’ is one of the oldest songs in my catalogue. I started writing it in 2011 when I was in my junior year of college, and it’s been through many, many iterations since. I kept revising it because I knew there was something essential that I was trying to communicate that I wasn’t quite finding the language for, but it also became a trap that I got stuck in, letting perfect be the enemy of the good. I feel proud of the version that I captured here because I did something daring with it. I totally rewrote the middle section very close to the time I recorded it, which meant killing some darlings that I had grown attached to over years of living with that song. And the result? That middle section is now my favourite part of the song!

The other song I’d say is most personal to me is ‘Saturn’. It’s the first song I produced for the album, the first original song I had released in five years when I released it, and it captures the emotional/spiritual core of this project. I hear such passion in that piece.

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OSR: Compared to your last EP Providence, do you feel that this album shows a growth or evolution in your style and sound?

Freeman: Definitely! Providence had a narrower sonic palette, and I was less confident in the art of the studio as a whole distinct organism within the recording process. There were also no backing vocals on Providence, which is wild because it became my favourite part of the process on Quiet Fury. When I started this project, because I was coming out of Andrew Huang’s production class, which opened up a whole world of MIDI-based possibilities, I had huge amounts of fun falling down the rabbit hole of sonic experimentation while building each song. As I said earlier, I’m excited to hone and focus my sound on the next set of projects, but I think it was really valuable for me to explore so widely here.

OSR: You draw inspiration from a diverse range of artists and musicians, but what do you feel has had the largest impact on your sound?

Freeman: Gospel music has had a huge impact on me. My mom sang me to sleep with ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and ‘Rock My Soul In the Bosom of Abraham’ growing up. I sang in a black church-style gospel choir when I lived in Spain from 2015-2017, and many of my favourite artists work in, reference, and are deeply formed by various lineages of gospel music. I consider myself a guest in the tradition of gospel, both as a white person and as a Jew, and I try to conduct myself with humility and respect. The music and the history that led to the music are profound.

OSR: There is a feeling of spiritual growth woven into each of the tracks, but do you feel that this is something everyone who listens will be able to connect with?

Freeman: I hope so! I’ll say first that I consider spirituality and religion to be entirely separate things, though obviously things that are related for many people. I played with religious imagery very intentionally throughout this project because I had recently come out of a three-year master’s program in the study and practice of spiritual leadership, and because religion has always interested me. That said, I am deeply ambivalent about my own relationship to religion and definitely think of these songs as speaking to something, in me and hopefully in others, that transcends religious differences. My favourite definition of spirituality, and what I wrote these songs to hopefully serve as a portal into, is: “the relationship between self, others, and all that is.”

OSR: The music on the album often walks the line between pop and soul. What genre are you most drawn to?

Freeman: I have such a hard time with genres I can certainly never pinpoint my own sound. I am definitely drawn to artists that can find a marriage of musical adventurousness (complex chords, interesting forms, etc.) and a pop sensibility (singability, hook-based writing, etc.) in their work. Adam Melchor and serpentwithfeet are two contemporary artists that I think do this beautifully; Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, and the Beach Boys are some of the classic artists that I listen to for the same reason. That’s what I’m trying to find in my own work.

OSR: Now that you have released your first full-length album, what else do you have in the pipeline?

Freeman: This summer I’ve been exploring new collaborations, revisiting some old songs, and writing some new ones. I am enjoying writing, recording, and beginning to perform live again without such a strong sense of it leading toward anything in particular, but insofar as a sense of a project is beginning to emerge, I think the next set of songs is going to have a more retro, live-instrument focused feel and will be more specifically honed as pop songs. I’m excited to apply to some music residencies this fall and continue pushing forward!

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Thanks to Ben Freeman for chatting with us! You can find more about him on his Instagram and Spotify.