FACE BAR is gearing up to welcome a compelling pair of acts next week: one setting out on tour, and one making a return to the stage after a decade away.
Teesside’s noise-punk purveyors Benefits are bringing Dan Le Sac to the stage with them as they kick of their latest tour right here in Reading.
The band’s vocalist Kingsley Hall says: “We played in Reading for the first ever time at Are You Listening Festival earlier this year; we loved it and were excited to return as quickly as possible.
“It’s a cool town, we like it, and Face Bar is an awesome venue.”
They’ll be joined by Reading’s own Dan Le Sac, producer and composer behind the likes of videogame soundtracks for Disney, as well as indie titles, including in the Tron franchise, both Subsurface Circular and Quarantine Circular, and Arcsmith.
Kingsley explains: “We always try and find supports who we’ll be excited to see every night as well as get along with and we didn’t think Dan would agree to it but he did.
“We first met Dan at Are You Listening Festival and got along great–me and Robbie are both music fans more than anything, so we get completely overawed meeting people that we actually own records by.
“It’s always fantastic to discover they’re basically lovely humans and not egotistical weirdos and Dan Le Sac is exactly that, a lovely human.
“It’ll be his first show for nearly ten years, so we’re very lucky!”
The tour comes hot on the heels of the band’s latest album, their sophomore outing, Constant Noise.
“Our first album Nails is pretty harsh and bleak. It’s a crushing slab of punk electronica and we absolutely love it.
“But touring it drove us both mad and due to all the on-stage shouting I destroyed my vocal cords.
“The second album Constant Noise takes a lot of the themes of the first but expands on it, like when Dorothy lands in Oz, we wanted it to flip our world into Technicolor.
“It’s still an angry protest album but it’s trying to say what it wants to say in an unconventional way–it’s spoken word over shouting, and lush soundscapes over noise… mostly.”
He added: “When it was released, it was best reviewed album of the year on websites that compile album reviews from across the world, which is pretty amazing for something that was recorded in bedrooms, kitchens and lofts on a tiny budget.”
“We started this band to try and create something we’d never seen before. We wanted to make something as exciting to perform as it was to experience.
“Yes, we do have a tendency to compose songs with a political slant but really, we’re just trying to write about what goes on in our lives.”
As for their influences: “We’re influenced by every waking moment of the day, good and bad, and try to express that in our music.
“We try to take the audience on a bit of a thrill ride to get out point across – it’s occasionally noisy and intense, but it can also quieten down to a lone voice interrupting a silence.
“Look, The Times newspaper came and watched our last tour, gave us a glowing review and said I looked like a menacing bingo caller–you’ll love it.”
The band’s look is a bold and unique one–always something to be celebrated–but occasionally garners less-than-kind comments.
Among these was the epithet ‘Goths in Kappa’, which, despite the inauspicious origins of the phrase, has been somewhat co-opted by the band.
“[It] was actually an insult thrown at us via someone on the wonderful world of the internet.
“Instead of getting upset about it we decided to take ownership of it ourselves.
“We’ve been called all sorts of horrible things in the past and social media is a horrific place to visit if you want to build up some self-esteem–goths in Kappa doesn’t really come close to the bad stuff we’ve had.
“But we find that a nice way to take the sting out of it all is to make the words that are meant to hurt us powerless.”
The band has a flair for repurposing what is intended as a slight against them, too: “We’ve done this before when someone lovingly described us as ‘Lefty Woke S**te’.
“Instead of being offended by it we plastered it on t-shirts and sold it as merch–it’s probably our most popular tee.”
He admits that there’s a grain of truth in it, however: “Regardless of that explanation, they’re totally right–I’m a goth that wears Kappa.
“I’ve loved the Sisters of Mercy since I was a teen–dyed my hair black, painted my face white, wore mirrorshades, the lot–and I got into wearing Kappa after seeing how magnificent the Italian football team looked in the early 00s.
“I don’t think of Benefits the band as being particularly goth though, we don’t get many people turning up to watch us wearing cowboy hats covered in flour but they’re more than welcome to come if they want, they’d probably like it.
“Like all the best goth stuff we’re a contradiction of gloom and euphoria–also, we’re very very loud.”
As for the band’s name: “It’s probably not for the reason you’s think–despite us being labelled a political group, we called ourselves Benefits as the band was literally a beneficial thing for us.
“We’d meet every Thursday night in a practice room in Stockton, making loud and aggressive music was our way of coping with whatever issues or grievances we were dealing with at the time.
“During lockdown when we couldn’t meet up any more, the band was a good way to stay in touch with each other and to stay sane.
“We’re basically a self-help project set to heavy beats.”
Benefits will be joined by Dan Le Sac at Face Bar on Wednesday, November 12.
Full details and tickets available via: benefitstheband.com/live
