Build Buildings is Ben Tweel, currently a New Yorker. I’ve only come across him via this album, but there’s a fair string of releases dating back to the turn of the century, many available for free download. Build Buildings works with a subtle, intimate range of electronics. Minimal in terms of timbres, and sometimes even in structure, there is a consistently appealing twist on all he does. Working within pop-song timeframes helps keep the ideas ticking over so that, while the tracks mesh together well as a whole, each piece stands by itself with its own character.
‘A Solar Panel’ starts things off with loose shards of static and a stuttering kick drum, before gentle bass joins in half way through to give the track forward momentum. ‘Ishihara’ is warm analogue bleeps and tiny rhythms – I could even imagine Bjork singing over something like this. ‘Letter Codes’ and ‘Let’s Go’ get a little more strident in their rhythmic push midway through the album, the former utilising an almost r’n'b strut to propel it’s sharply cut bit-crushed synth loops. ‘Ilicoastal’ builds tension through repetition and rhythms made of sounds which really feel like they are the squeaks and bangs the walls around you are making. Many of these textures are built from well manipulated found sounds – ‘Elevators, Escalators’ using a click of the on/off button of a desk fan, ‘Ilicoastal’ the opening of an envelope.
Ceiling Lights From Street is an apt title for the album. It’s real sense of intimacy feels like you are looking into the loungeroom of its creator from outside his window. And he’d probably let you in if you asked. There’s great warmth and space, consistency and variety, making for quite a pleasurable listen.
Adrian Elmer
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