Beauty, we are told, lives in the eye of the beholder. Yet it often blossoms where we least expect it – inside the fractured, the corroded and the scarred. Indeed, many visual artists, and, of course, musicians, turn to what is weathered and worn, finding fascination in landscapes and soundscapes shaped by the inevitable destruction. In their hands, the obliteration embraces beauty, creating contrasts in harmony and dissonance, in unity and chaos. Perhaps no contemporary composer understands this duality better than Ben Chatwin, whose 2024 album Verdigris is a testament to the exquisite tension between opposing forces. In the space where classical instrumentation collides with electronic manipulation, Ben has carved out a place where the gleaming surfaces of orchestral arrangements oxidise and erode under the influence of modular synthesis, noise, and distortion. Like the album’s namesake – that blue-green patina that forms on copper or brass over time – these compositions reveal how beauty emerges not despite deterioration, but because of it.
Verdigris exists at the confluence of contradictions. The English composer’s full-length release under his real name embraces a particular kind of beautiful agony – a sonic exploration where grace and friction dance in a perpetual tension. The album’s narrative unfolds like weathered copper, where time’s passage creates something entirely new from what once was polished and pristine. It is precisely at the intersection of grace and graze. Beneath the dense and gritty layers of processed sounds with advanced analogue synthesis, we find medieval choral samples, deeply hidden in the sonic slab. There’s plenty of melody and rhythm. But there’s also plenty of contortion thereof. I have a visceral response to all these sounds. I want to break things, to destroy. I want to peel apart the exterior and find what sleeps inside. I want to pry the welded layers and then examine what’s breathing underneath. I feel I know what I will find there. And so I dig into its flesh. This type of deliberate, abrasive elegance in the composition approach is what drives me to explore his sound further.
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