Ben Chatwin is an experimental electronic composer who works primarily with modular synths and other hardware to create densely layered soundscapes with sweeping emotional resonances. His music combines brutalist rhythms with drifting strings and synths, to create music that is once abstract and cinematic. 

Ben has now released roughly an album a year for over a decade. The Hum (Village Green) will be his seventh release under his own name, and his thirteenth in total. Previously, he released under the name Talvihorros, as well as working on remixes, collaborations and split releases. 

His music explores the tension between electronic music and acoustic composition, and he plays a number of instruments he has taught himself along the way. His powerful aesthetic is underpinned with a commitment to bold concepts and arresting ideas, from the ambitious Signals trilogy (Village Green), where he looked to relinquish control of his music by giving it to other producers and surrendering it to technology, to The Sleeper Awakes (Village Green), an album inspired by the writing of H.G. Wells. His final album as Talvihorros was Eaten Alive (Fluid Audio) an album about drug addiction and homelessness in East London. 

Ben first began working under his own name when he moved from London to Scotland, first to Edinburgh, then Queensferry. As he reconnected with his music, found solace in nature and walking, he also gained a new confidence and commitment in his work. "It felt like a new start moving up here, I felt like I had more space, it's had a big influence on how I compose. As I began walking more and enjoying nature, everything felt different, including music making. It always felt like I was hiding behind a pseudonym, but then I realised this was something I was going to do for the rest of my life." 

Ben now works from his home studio, The Vennel, a den he's been filling with esoteric and broken instruments for the last 20 years. His treasure trove of oddities includes a 19th century dulcitone, a metallophone, harmoniums, heavily modded guitars, toy Casios, 8bit samplers, and his favourite, a Minibrute covered in grime. He collects instruments that have an unpredictable quality, which can bring an element of the unknown into his compositional process, and often lead to the sonic unlocking of what otherwise would be discarded equipment.

Ben first began making music after the life-changing realisation that he wanted to be a composer as a teenager. The bolt came out of the blue – he did not play an instrument, although he was an all-consuming listener. Driven by determination to succeed, he dropped everything, quit his studies, and began to teach himself. People around him thought he was throwing his life away, but he persevered. He developed his own sound through devouring huge amounts of music, film and literature, until he found a gap between what he was listening to and what he wanted to hear. "I was honing in," he says. "When I got to the point where I couldn't find what I wanted, that was where my sound came in."

His compositions are now rooted in experimental electronic practices, from the broken equipment and glitches of artists like Pole and Oval to the immersive sounds of artists like Tim Hecker, Labradford and Grouper, as well as working with modular and often on tape, Ben's music is one with a distinctive sound and patina, whether it soothes with snowdrifts of drone or makes sound physical with colossal shards of vibrational feedback.

He is driven by the deep pleasure he finds in composing, and has performed live internationally, from festivals including Le Guess Who? (NL) Celtic Connections (Glasgow) Incubate (NL) and Fields (Moscow) to performances at the Southbank and collaborations in dance with The Scottish Ballet, Company Chameleon, and Alexander Whitley.

"The process of making music is a healing one for me," he says. " I enjoy it immensely, and it is spiritual in a way. When it all flows, I can lose hours. I don't get that feeling from anything else."