Ben Chatwin

Scottish musician Ben Chatwin fuses electronic textures with acoustic instruments such as guitars, bells, strings, and organs to produce his shadowy, spectral ambient works. His oneiric constructions dispense with conventional pulses and verse-chorus frameworks, yet stay richly tuneful and emotionally resonant, summoning the tension of film scores as well as the widescreen sweep of post-rock. After issuing a series of limited editions under the Talvihorros alias from 2008 onward, Chatwin began recording under his own name with 2015’s The Sleeper Awakes, an album that featured a century-old dulcitone. His sonic palette grew considerably with the fully orchestrated Staccato Signals in 2018, while 2020’s The Hum mapped the concealed frequencies inside the recording studio through dense, abrasive soundscapes.

Under the Talvihorros name, Chatwin first distributed short-run cassettes and CD-Rs on imprints including Kaivo Records and Benbecula at the close of the 2000s. After Descent Into Delta appeared on Hibernate in 2011, German label Denovali Records took on the project, issuing And It Was So in 2012 and re-releasing several earlier recordings. Following 2013’s Eaten Alive, Chatwin switched to releasing music under his given name. The Sleeper Awakes came out on Village Green in 2015 and was succeeded by Heat & Entropy on Ba Da Bing the following year. He returned to Village Green for 2018’s Staccato Signals, which added string arrangements for a more expansive and dramatic result than his prior work. Companion piece Drone Signals appeared soon after, and the 2019 remix collection Altered Signals included reworkings by Steve Hauschildt and Pye Corner Audio among others. In 2020 Chatwin issued The Hum, an album conceived to register frequencies normally inaudible, such as the constant drone of studio power lines.