Images by George Ian Hewitt

Perhaps you know the great American songmaker 1010benja from "Boofiness," which I recommend googling, or maybe his P4k BNM'ed Ten Total album from last year. But right now I want to point you toward 3X10, the three songs he just released. They sound like a rock band jamming out, anchored by 1010benja's ringing tenor singing voice, which I will not strain to use any adjectives to describe. You just gotta tap in. One of the best singers of our time. Maybe his AI side project Penis Angel will also change your day (it's on bandcamp if you search). But mostly I want to rec his 1010 work as some of the rawest and most beautiful music I have ever heard, a project that keeps getting deeper and more moving to me. The 1010 ouvre touches on pop rock, hip-hop, praise music...but really any describing of the aesthetics feels corny to me because it's in a genre of its own. Listen and feel it and you'll get it.

Please enjoy our chat on the phone while 1010benja was in his home area of Kansas City, and I was in my living room in Brooklyn. We covered the rebellious nature of decency given the current status quo, how when things are their realest we tend to say “that’s unreal,” and what happens to your essence when you hold horse pose in karate class for an hour and a half. Among other topics. Thank you 1010benja, for everything.

I’m a big fan, and even my family likes your music. My wife feels it, my kid feels it.

Thanks for saying that. How many kids do you have?

I have a six year old.

I have a seven year old myself, and also a four and a 13 year old.

That must be a handful.

Yeah, for sure, but good.

So, the new project. How do you say it “three times 10”?

“Three by ten.”

Got it. Definitely three great songs. What was your life like when you made them?

Not too different than it is now. I was pretty focused on karate training, I was going into a summer special training, and testing for Q rank. And just in a very raw place. Kind of done with pretenses, trying to make something that’s right close to the surface.

I love that, mission accomplished. Did you make the songs with a band?

I produced the final versions in my room by myself, but I worked remotely with a couple of friends. For instance, on Lightrope the guitar solo is by my friend, who is also a musician, an artist in his own right, Kaito is his name, and he also composed the bulk of the instrumental for Chosen Omen which I just kind of wrote over and passed back and forth with him for further production and stuff.

How do you know Kaito?

We’ve been friends since we were kids.

From Tulsa?

Yeah. And also a friend of mine named Veir contributed a lot of synths and singing and stuff, across two of the three songs. He’s from Kansas City. They were emailing me layers, and I’d edit, and they’d send back something else, just remote.

It sounds like you’re in the same room.

Well, we try. Ha ha.

I don’t know if that was the intention or not.

A live feel, was definitely an intention with a lot of this rock music. But a lot of it’s not live. The basses and and guitars tend to be live, but there’s programming elements, and all of the drums tend to be programmed, even the more realistic ones. Because we’re just working in rooms, and corners, and I did some of the record in a friend’s basement.

Some of the singing?

Yes.

Was any of that process you trying new stuff, or pushing yourself in different ways?

That’s always the case. But the real challenge and real push these days is just working within limitations. Whatever limitations, financial, or gear limitations.

What kind of limitations were you up against with these new songs?

I had almost nothing to work with. I was really flying by the seat of my pants. Just working with an interface and a computer, and whatever instruments I could find laying around.

It’s funny how you can make something from nothing, and you do it because it’s what you can do. But when people receive it, it comes across like it’s what you chose to do out of all possible options.

That’s like divine intelligence. The gods chose. The limitations, the restraints, if you lean into it, they have a way of choosing.

I have to ask, would you consider AI a bandmate?

Yeah for sure, it’s just another collaborator.

I have a knee jerk prejudice against AI, but I’m aware you’re using it on some level, and I can’t fault you because the results are perfect.

I have yet to use it in my 1010 work. I haven’t used it at all in my 1010 work, just side projects. I think it’s hard to intermix these days. When I use AI, I tend to feed it my own songs a lot of the time, whether it’s lyrics or entire productions. I try and utilize it as a collaborator. Not to use AI to compensate, but it’s needs to be it’s own fever dream. It’s own bizarre, conceptual thing, and then it really comes alive. Using AI work to replace other work, whether it’s film or organic music, it tends to fall short. Using it conceptually and using it for the chaos, utilizing it’s hallucinations, as something to accentuate the art and trying to gen, gen, gen things down to where I get somewhere that is human and natural and wakes me up in the morning and lifts my soul, you have to do a thousand gens to get what you want, but that’s how I like to work it. There’s a lot of different approaches I use. To me it’s a means of documenting the apocalypse. It shows itself, and its intelligence a lot, and that intelligence is reflective of where we’re at civilizationally. The things it’s amalgamated are things we have amalgamated. I think we’ve just scratched the surface. I think there’s really interesting ways to use it. Working to push it past the point of discomfort, and working a project until it starts to become comforting and human again, is my MO. I have a few projects coming out that, some of them play with how absurd and hallucinatory AI music can get now. But a lot of it really rests on a bedrock, of, it’s almost like nostalgic simulacrum, building simulacrum in a space, in a world that is very unmolested. Very innocent in a way. Bringing a more or less satanic tool back to that place, I find to be very therapeutic.

I never expected you to say that. I’m processing it.

It might be a big idea. I’m into virtue. Meritocracy and virtue, romantic attitudes about music. But by nature I’m an edgefinder. Getting to that edge, looking over into that void, and then walking those sentiments back into this beautiful apple pie…. Someone was writing about my music recently, and people say it a lot, that they want to cringe. They want it to be corny, or something, but they like it. I think it has something to do with the fact that I admire a virtuous, almost troubadorian romance in art and music. And for this reason I was always a big David Lynch fan, becuase he makes all these weird an occult threads into this apple pie veneer, and I think that’s really cool. I think I like the idea of, although I sometimes transgress upon this, I like the idea of the majority of my artwork even being able to be processed by children. Enjoyed by people who are in more innocent states of mind, without fear of creating something too shocking. I think at this point in my life I’m the least interested in creating shocking work in the conventional sense, I kind of think it’s shocking to make something heartfelt. If the mindset is liberal enough to allow in those moments of strange nightmare-ishness, and to temper, and kind of tastefully tease that out, like in Twin Peaks, the CBS version, I think those ideas are very attractive. I’m a big fan of Hideo Kajima and Tetsuya Nomura, and I like the idea of really silly, irreverent, absurd, popular art and music that almost rests on biblical bedrock of virtue. And some of that probably comes from my very Christian upbringing.

Wow, it’s good to hear you say all that stuff. I don’t find your music cringe at all.

Well, thanks.

I do find it emotionally affecting. And a lot people do music to be cool…

Ah, yeah, I tried it. I just am not that cool.

You tried it?

I tried it plenty. In all of my experiences in this industry, and trying to get in, I for sure tried to be cool. But whenever i try to be cool and hear it back, or see it back on screen, it just sucks. I like cool people, but I don’t feel very cool like that. Like, I like artists who are just so fucking cool.

Like, who’s that?

There’s tons of em. They’re always happening.

Ha ha.

These days, Nettspend, Xaviersobased. Just cool kids, dude.

Yeah, they’re cool.

I never was cool. I’ve always been kind of a book nerd, hyper sensitive, never cool. I’ve gotten cooler in life through the grit of living. But it was never natural for me to be cool.

Do you appreciate your uncoolness as you get older?

I think I was always pretty empathetic to myself, in that regard. But I definitely have learned to be more secure in myself as I’ve gotten older.

I notice that on 3X10 and also Ten Total you lyrically play with “real” and “surreal.” What attracts you to these words?

I wonder. I think maybe because they’re so, connotatively they’re essentially the same. When something is really real, it’s usually because it has an elevated sense of superreality, it’s almost unreal. You know, like how when something amazing happens people say, “That was unreal.” Or, “Is this even real?” I feel like when something is really, truly real, it kind of leaves you guessing. Ha ha. You know? Because reality is a here and now thing. It’s the moment itself unfolding. In that way, it can become quite puzzling, what that reality really is. You lose your sense of it for a moment. Like the awe of god.

People do say that, “This is unreal!”

Like if something horribly violent happens right in front of you, you spend the week, or years, trying to process the reality of it. It’s almost like reality is something that, the second you’ve documented something, or are looking ahead to something, those moments aren’t really real. The real moment is kind of ineffable, it’s the right now.

I really like your lyrics on Ten Total. Some, I can’t listen to with my daughter.

Oh yeah?

Like, I’m not going to listen to Peacekeeper, not that it’s the most profane thing ever or anything.

That’s all good, man. I’m with you on that.

But I do love that song. But a song like Twin, we can really belt that out together.

I think when I’m in my 60s, the majority of work will be able to be viewed by all ages. But it will be very deep. Another artist I didn’t mention is of course Miyazaki. I love people that like figure out how to go gray with how absurd their mind is, and fit all of that into, something, like you said, a six year old can watch. As a father, that’s become very important to me.

I think of putting music on in the house as a kind of DJing. The audience is the rest of your family. There’s certain songs that work better than others.

With my kids, with lyrics, they’re allowed to engage with stuff that’s probably more inappropriate than a lot of six year olds. Like they’ve heard Peacekeeper hella times. But with the work I’m making I think more about how it can maybe be shocking in terms of it’s valiant resolve against the status quo, but at the same time in terms of it’s ergonomics of human nature and psychology it can be very gentle. As someone who started with hardcore punk music as a kid, I find that idea more galvanizing, that puzzle, of making something that is a means of resistance, but because the status quo these days is so vile, and violent, and hateful, my rebellion has become that. I guess I’m just a typical nonconformist, rebel without a cause, and it manifests itself this way, because the vogue of things has become so obscene. The new resistance is to pack that back up, what we’ve unpacked.

The new resistance is to be decent.

Yeah, ha ha. Just be human. And I worked my way to that from, like we were saying earlier, attempting to be a badass so many times in a row, just crashing and burning. It doesn’t work for me. That’s not where my heart is at, as an artist.

You identified that you fit into this archetype of a rebel against the status quo. But we’re also talking about trying to make beautiful stuff that is decent, and virtuous.

It’s almost society versus nature. Is the dichotomy that comes to mind. I think that outside of moralism, there’s good nature and bad nature. It’s specifically between people, interpersonally. I can resist against aspects of society, these days, by being more natural. Aiming to grow to become healthier.

It’s a holistic way of considering artwork. It has everything to do with who you are.

I think so.

It’s a lot of skin in the game, for you, it’s not cynical whatsoever.

No, I’m taking it all on the chin. Being honest is not always easy.

You touched on your religious background a bit, how else does that show up in your music?

I was raised by great men and women that were Christian, yes, but also very creative and good hearted. And almost extremists in their level of wanting to garner compassion and beauty. Despite not coming from the most fleshed out artistic lexicon. But the intention and the dreams that were alive in the adults in my family when I was a kid were very soulful, and rich. I was surrounded by soulful, Black, gospel music, and I resisted it angrily. But now I really cherish those beginnings. Some of the people in my family, the pastors, in my mind now, were men of myth. Incredible warriors of peace and love.

When you were resisting it, was that when you were trying to be cool?

That’s part of it. I think I’ve never tried that hard to fit in. But my inner dogmas were trying to win over the rest of the world, rather than figure myself out, at those times. For a long time, I thought that the starmaking machine was the reality that existed outside the overly sterile false constraints of the church. I realized though, that everything that was fake about the church was in full effect if not doubly so in Hollywood. It was just another religion. Entertainment is just another religion. In my mind, I thought entertainment was a promised land, a pure place where artists could put stuff out there an change the world. I didn’t see it for what it was.

I will say the industry is absolutely disgusting. Everything I do in music, I try to keep it small, although I guess it’s ok if it becomes big…

I mean I really do need it to work out, I need to pay for a house and stuff…

Yeah. But like the interference of capitalism, and clout, and cool, I’m trying to live outside that.

For those of us who want to do something true, it’s almost a self sacrifice.

It is, almost.

We have to learn not to get too bogged down and embittered by that, to show people a hopeful face.

I don’t know how you’re doing psychologically, or in other ways, but your music does help me in that regard.

Mentally I’m great, financially I’m fucked. Ha ha. But thank you, I’m glad that it helps you.

I read that you were sleeping different places in New York in the 2010s, maybe sleeping in the subways, or in a storage unit.

Yeah, I struggled a lot. Maybe too much.

I used to work in a shelter, as a social worker. Did you ever consider the shelter system?

No.

Why not?

Because I didn’t want to be homeless. The way I saw it, I was gonna make it tomorrow. I just needed to hang on a little while longer. I didn’t want to be homeless, I didn’t hang out with a lot of homeless people. I didn’t want to identify. It’s no offense, to anyone going through that. But in terms of constructing my life in those young, formative years, I was afraid that if I overidentified with being homeless, that if I found comfort or complacency in being homeless, then I would just be homeless. It went on for five years, on and off. I existentially wrestled with it. I think mostly I just wanted to be alone.

To work something out, independently?

Yeah, what I was working on was very independent. I would go places I wanted to be, galleries, parties, around people who were studying for MFAs, and find places to take showers and bear being outside society.

That’s a real borderline, between in society and out of society.

The borderline is what 1010 is all about. It’s that middle place, between the dark and light. Between polarities and extremes.

In that time, is that when you were scoring fashion shows for Alyx?

No, that was later on. But you know the contrast of scoring shows for fashion week in Paris, or performing in the Italian Alps, or I just came back from a chateau in France. Stayed there for five days and performed a set for ten minutes for a wedding. I’m always spending time around people who have found success or money. I like to see a good amount of both worlds.

Do you stay in touch with anyone from fashion?

I have a few friends there, but I never had too much of a clothing budget. I don’t really dress, so that’s a boundary. But a friend of mine has a company called Demo, that makes cool stuff. He’s doing a lot of work with Playboi Carti right now. I had a good feeling with Matt from Alyx, but we’re not that close. I know a few people here and there. I appreciate it. But I don’t really fit into the culture. People do look cool though, and I’m always enamored.

If you look at how fashion designers dress, it’s like you, kind of utilitarian.

I like the studio type aesthetic, showing up to work.

Do you feel like being a voracious ingester of art and music, is that your version of getting paid?

It’s my version of addiction. I have an addiction to getting information.

Is that sapiosexuality?

It’s not sexual. But maybe.

I’m sure I’m projecting a lot, but I’m pretty bad with money, and I can’t think about it very well. I can’t energize my mind to think about generating income. I can only think about what am I doing with my labor and what it is accomplishing.

I relate to that feeling. Money is an artform I would like to understand. But that feeling, it’s hard for me to be very motivated by things that are not of a spiritual nature. I train karate at this dojo in KC, and it’s helped me a lot in the past year and a half, outside those goals of music and art, and work hard at something. Built up motivational energy to just have.

Do you turn off your mind when you do karate?

It’s a whole struggle, your body labors, then your mind is going, and then you turn that off and the body is too loose, or the mind is too tight, it’s a constant adjustment. And you find these bliss zones in a flow state. But it’s a practice and it take decades. So I’m struggling a lot. But it definitely turns off the hyper introspection, or pares it down until it’s utterly refined. We sometimes hold a low horse stance for an hour and a half. In those zones, and there’s one later that day when we have to do 1,200 kicks…

What the fuck.

I’ve done three. In those moments, your whole identity shrinks to water. How much you wanna drink water. You’re still you, but all the noise is cleared out. And you’re just focused on this central need for water. That kind of stuff helps me understand the machine that I’m operating, in terms of the body and the mind.

I need that kind of practice in my life.

It’s definitely changing mine.

I recently saw the New York marathon, and saw people with one leg, or one eye, doing this really hard thing. And it was great to cheer them on because they’re not special, they’re regular, and they’re leveling up in this amazing way and doing something really impressive.

Yeah. One thing I learned in karate is that people are really capable. All people. Some of these people are 60, 70. My sensei is 74 and I would never try to fuck with him.

Seems like a good and generous mindstate, to think of people as capable and strong.

I learn a lot of respect. And that respect gives way to adoration and admiration and love. Which keeps back the fear. And helps me to feel more operable.