Ben Wa

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ben Wa
General information
Genre (s) Electro , dub
founding 1997
resolution 2002
Website benwa.net ( Memento from July 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Last occupation
electronic sound generator, bass guitar
 Anthony Chaba
electronic sound generators, keyboards
 Eric Ware

Ben Wa was an American electro duo who released several EPs and albums between 1998 and 2001. Due to good networking within the music scene of the San Francisco Bay Area , the duo was able to work with various well-known musicians and achieve some respectable success with their publications.

Career

Bassist Anthony "House" Chaba (also known as "Butthouse") and keyboardist Eric "Dr. Ware" Ware have previously been in various bands and projects such as Limbomaniacs, which are produced or sponsored by Bill Laswell and Bootsy Collins , and Big Janitor, MCM & the Monster and the prominent Frank Zappa co-association CaCa. For Ben Wa (named after a sex toy ) they focused on an electronic retro sound with influences from dub and hip-hop.

After a contribution to Bill Laswell's album Tetragramaton: Submerge (1997), they released their first EP called EP 1 in 1998 and appeared as opening act for the Laswell-led band Praxis , where Limbomaniacs colleague Bryan Mantia was also the drummer. There they met the well-known dub producer Hopeton "Scientist" Brown from Jamaica. This did not participate in their debut album Devil Dub , but supported them at the release party in January 1999. Various members of the Limbomaniacs and Praxis, including the drummer Mantia, the Turntabler DJ Disk and guitarists Buckethead and were represented as guests on the album Marc "MIRV" Haggard. Mantia initially played the drums with a click, from which Chaba and Ware formed the grooves . Later the other musicians came whenever their schedule allowed and the duo then worked on the mostly improvised recordings. It was only after the CD was finished that Mantia knew what the music actually sounded like. Chaba and Ware later described the recording process as a nightmare, as the synchronization of the technology used turned out to be more difficult than expected, which seriously endangered the project. Devil Dub was very well received by the critics, in particular the influential US magazine URB praised the album as one of the best releases of the year. Rick Anderson awarded 4.5 out of 5 stars on Allmusic .

With the song Re-Dub , the duo participated again in an album compiled by Laswell ( Reanimator: Black Market Science , 1998) and in 1999 Bionic Beat appeared on the compilation Phunky Acid Breaks by Adrenalin Records.

Another EP with the title Elektro-Krazy followed in 2000 on the Malvado label. Break That Stone appeared as a sampler on Docking Sequence: BSI Compilation Vol. 1 (republished in 2003 on Dub After Time: A Look Back At BSI Records ).

Then Ben Wa switched to Stray Records, a short-lived daughter of Dogday Entertainment from her hometown of Oakland , where colleagues who were friends also released their albums around the turn of the millennium (including Buckethead and DJ Disk). There the album Disciples Of Retro-Tech was released in August 2001 , which was released as a single CD and double vinyl. An EP with four songs from the album was also released in 2001. Again there were good reviews, for example from Stephen Cook, who awarded 4 out of 5 stars on Allmusic . SF Weekly's Chris Baty and Hear / Say's Daiv Whaley also praised the album.

Equipment

At Elektro-Krazy's time , Ben Wa were using the Nord Lead 2 synthesizer and the first version of the ReBirth RB-338 software, as well as the old analog synthesizers Prophet-5 from Sequential Circuits and Juno-106 and SH101 from Roland . The older ProCussion expander from E-mu Systems was also used for drum sounds . The software Vision from Opcode Systems on a Power Macintosh 8500 served as the MIDI sequencer . A Digidesign SampleCell II, built into a Macintosh IIci, served as the sampler card . The recordings were made on devices of the first generation of the Alesis digital audio tape ("Blackface").

After the dissolution

Eric Ware continues to work as a producer and musician in Oakland . His current project is called E3. Anthony Chaba was among other things bassist on the album Mooch The Moose: Smack Dealer To The Stars by DJ Disk and The Filthy Ape in 2001 , toured with Buckethead's band Giant Robot in 2004, was a speaker and musician on commercials for Toyota , Levi's , Dryers Ice Cream and The Goodguys and now lives in São Paulo .

Discography

  • EP 1 (12 "-EP, Black Hole Records, 1998)
  • Devil Dub (CD, Black Hole Records, 1998)
  • Elektro-Krazy (12 "EP, Malvado Records, 2000)
  • Retro-Tech EP (12 "-EP, Stray Records, 2001)
  • Disciples Of Retro-Tech (Double LP and CD, Stray Records, 2001)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Charles Spano: Biography on Allmusic .
  2. ↑ CaCa on united-mutations.com
  3. ↑ a b Michelle Goldberg: Ben Wa's debut CD, 'Devil Dub,' offers classic old-school dub. In: Metro Silicon Valley , January 7, 1999.
  4. ↑ Cleofus Williams: Runnin 'With The Devil ( Memento November 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on gogorilla.com.
  5. ↑ a b Chris Baty: Ben There, Done That. In: SF Weekly , October 17, 2001.
  6. ↑ Rick Anderson: Review of Devil Dub on Allmusic .
  7. ↑ Stephen Cook: Review of Disciples Of Retro-Tech on Allmusic .
  8. ↑ Daiv Whaley: Review of: Disciples of Retro-Tech ( Memento from July 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). In: Hear / Say , November 2001.
  9. ↑ GearTalk: Ben Wa . IGN Entertainment , April 4, 2001.
  10. ↑ Eric Ware on Soundcloud .
  11. ↑ E3 on Facebook .
  12. ↑ Mooch The Moose: Smack Dealer To The Stars on Discogs.
  13. ↑ House on Bass on Facebook.