Singled Out: Ben Basic Goes Industrial Horror With 'Dust' Video

Ben Basic is turning heads with the industrial horror video he made for his new single "Dust". To celebrate we asked Ben to tell us about the song and the video. Here is the story:

I work as a stagehand in San Francisco. Assisting shows like Metallica, The Foo Fighters and Journey inspired me to engineer DIY versions of high budget live production techniques I could use in my performances. In "Dust" I wanted the guitar sound heard on REM's "Crush with Eyeliner"; The Smiths "How Soon is Now"; and U2's "I will follow"; where the guitar effect synchronizes to the songs metronome. Using a TC Helicon Voicelive 3 I was able to synchronize my guitar effect to a drum loop and the song was born of that process.

I wanted the music video to reinforce the theme of synchronization. My idea was to synchronize a performance to a strobe, but do multiple takes of it, adding blood in each take. The takes would then be edited together at the strobe bursts creating the illusion of single performance where I got progressively bloodier. I emailed Robin Moore from Plus M Productions to vet the idea, to my surprise he wrote back offering to direct it. We recruited make up artist Erica Angius and PA Nate Brown. A shoot location was secured at 17th Avenue Studios in Santa Cruz, CA and the result can be seen here!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song and video, listen and watch for yourself right here!

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