Now Playing - 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.
The Band
"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."
On their work
"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."
"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."
Read the rest of the article here!
The Band
"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."
On their work
"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."
"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."
Read the rest of the article here!
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