ART by BENNY SINGS

New one from Benny Sings! A great one!! TIPSince his first album Champagne People (2003), Benny Sings has been making a deep impression with both press and public. Universally acclaimed by reviewers – 'A revelation!', 'rare and innovative' – this debut immediately put Benny Sings on the musical map. He played large festivals and won prizes, including the 2004 Essent Award. The album also received good reviews outside his native Netherlands and was released on vinyl internationally via Kindred Spirits/Rush Hour. His second album I Love You (2005) was also warmly received around the world. The famous BBC DJ Gilles Peterson became a fan and Benny’s song Little Donna became a hit in France on Radio Nova. There followed a small tour through Europe, and he also made headway into Japan. With his third album Benny.. at Home (2007), Benny was already an established name and rave reviews started to come out of the US, including one front page piece on www.okayplayer.com (which as the website of Questlove and The Roots rates as busiest hiphop site on the planet). Despite of all this recognition, Benny Sings only feels that with his album ART that he has finally properly applied everything he has learned about composition, production techniques and his musical philosophy. ‘Making albums is a learning process. After every album I feel as if I have completed another year at the Benny Sings Music University. And ART is my graduation project. It’s the finale to my 10 years of toil. I finally have my diploma. It represents my first work as a mature artist – my first real “work of art’’.’ More from Benny Sings about ART: ‘Sometimes a good text, a good composition and good production come together to make an okay song. It works but nothing more than that. Meanwhile, sometimes a bad text, a bad arrangement and bad production can fuse into something really amazing. Somehow the song becomes greater than its parts. It has that something extra – it’s magical. You can never predict when this happens. Sometimes it occurs when you break all the rules, and other times it happens when just follow them. Either way, it always comes as a surprise. For this album I wanted to focus less on production and song writing and more on that one magic moment. ‘It is of course impossible to call your own work “art”. But in a time when the pretensions of the ‘high art’ pundits are greater than ever, I have the urge to break this unwritten rule. In an age when Kanye West is regarded as an important arts connoisseur, I want to call my own work “art”. It is a word that has almost lost its meaning. I also think it’s a nice word: “ART”.’ ART features nine tracks and they all audibly carry Benny Sings’ signature sound: a clear and airy lightness packaged in great songs, but then always with a melancholic edge.