Von Wildenhaus, hailing from the fog-drenched Pacific Northwest, is an apocalyptic avant-pop lounge act, a bizarro rock & roll band as comfortable working in American folk idioms as covering Klaus Nomi. Ben Von Wildenhaus leads a cast of shadowy conspirators in conjuring this darkly sonorous music, most notably, the spectral presence of singer Billie Bloom, who delivers ecstatic melodies with fearless and riveting devotion that have found admirers in The Quietus and Iggy Pop.
extensive biography
The Early Days (2007-2010)
After 10 years spent deploying sonic barrages with saturnine heavy-riffers Federation X, tinnitus wasn’t the only voice in the back of Ben Wildenhaus’s head. “I had always listened to surf along with garage and punk and all the heavy and angular Olympia stuff,” he says. “But at the same time I was playing and listening to a lot of jazz—Bill Evans, Duke Ellington, Miles, especially electric Miles, John Zorn, and getting weird with experimental stuff.”
Languishing in the drowsy college town of Bellingham, WA, those other sounds started speaking in the back of his brain, too. Without Federation X touring or recording on a regular basis, he started playing in every other band in town. “I was playing two or three nights a week in Bellingham, and touring as a sideman. I started to get pretty tired of Americana, Townes and Graham Parsons, bluegrass beard rock, etc. I learned a lot about playing but missed the creating new music.”
So he and wife, Tawni, broke the notorious clutches of that town and landed in New York City. “I always felt an attraction to NYC. It’s the closest you can get to world travel without the need for deep pockets. I decided to focus on six-string guitar—in Fed X we used only the four heaviest strings—by playing as much as possible around Brooklyn and composing new music for a podcast called Instrumental Quaalude.” There wasn’t exactly a clamoring commercial demand for Wildenhaus’s new style at first, so he played where he could, whether he was expected or not:
“There was this small vegetarian restaurant/cafe down the street from our place called Phoebe’s that hosted random singer-songwriters. One day I asked the bartender if I could play during her shifts. I arrived every Wednesday and, instead of setting up in the front, I’d take a position in the dark back-area, among the boxes of wine and beers and napkins. I’d set my amp to a very low volume and mic it through the house stereo system. Then I’d improvise wallpaper jams for hours in exchange for a meal and booze.
“And I wrote a lot of material while improvising there. I also learned a lot about space in music there. When you’re performing in front of an attentive audience, there’s a lot of pressure to keep changing things, to move the music and your body, make things progress in some sort of visual way. In the shadows at Phoebe’s, I could let a simple melody or pattern settle into the space, get into all the corners.”
Great Melodies from Around (2011)
After gigging around, Wildenhaus ventured out of the shadows to start playing real shows. His first performance after stepping out of his wallpaper roll was at the Regina Rex inside a Takashi Horisaki’s latex sculpture with about 15 people sitting around him. “At that point I had the confidence in my playing and direction to lead an audience with my performance,” he says. “A character started to emerge on stage, an anxious Neil Hamburger type who’s aggressively demanding audience attention.” Offstage, his burgeoning zeal for composition and professionalism had crystalized, and he started taking work scoring film shorts and videos for Etsy, the occasional video game, a web series, NPR, and other non-profits.
Eventually, he cut Great Melodies from Around, which traipses hazily through Eastern-influenced melodies and rhythms, fireside pedal-steel languor, and just about everything in between. Using tape loops, voice, guitars, bass, drums, a sine-wave generator, pedal steel, lap steel, accordion, piano, and a Wurlitzer [organ], Wildenhaus traverses melody fragments and song sections that seem to drift in and out like wraiths, never staying long enough to grow tiresome. The result is at once meditative, transformative, and isolating. And with Melodies, Wildenhaus pinpointed what he calls the Professional Band—Jude Webre (Jack Martin’s Bob Dylan Death Watch) on bass, Anthony LaMarca (War on Drugs, Dean & Britta, The Building) on drums, and Denise Fillion (Iktus Piano & Percussion Duo) playing his Wurlitzer 200a. “We started playing Zebulon, a now defunct francophile bar in Williamsburg that had a great musician’s music scene going on,” he says. “Lots of global music, experimental sounds, local weirdos, and neighborhood celebrities.”
When James Anthony of Riot Bear Recording Co. heard a cassette copy of Melodies, he picked up the record, pressed vinyl, and had CD copies made. It met favorable reviews, and tours and SXSW followed. Wildenhaus also started collaborating with the House Plants outfit on video projects, including the 30-minute Orbothology, a self-described “trippy, stoner video projector/music nightmare.”
II (2015)
“We recorded II in the summer of 2012 as my family packed up to move to Seattle,” Wildenhaus says. “It took another year of being too poor and dealing with seasonal-affective disorder and homecoming shock before I was able to get the ball rolling again.” The idea of professionalism, which is “abundant in NYC and unheard of in the old NW DIY scene,” drove the creation of II, he says. “Great Melodies From Around was meant to sound like a pastiche of found sounds and various kinds of degraded-fidelity media. II is completely pro.”
Thus, some additional players joined the Professional Band on II: Vocalist Clara Kennedy is a Juilliard graduate, Scott Matthew is an internationally successful touring artist (and was also featured prominently in John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus), and Jeff Cook is a full-time Midtown Manhattan studio engineer who also runs a more affordable night-and-weekend studio from his Bushwick home for “friends and like-minded poor-asses.” The resulting II is a mirror record, meaning that side two is a mirror image of side one, physically, thematically, and melodically. The song-breaks in the grooves on side one look identical to those on side two. Side one features the vocals of Kennedy on four of its five songs, and side two features the vocals of Matthew on four of its five songs.
Wildenhaus explains further:
“For example, the first song on side one is “Bad Lament I,” which is based on a three-note melody sung by Clara. Its flipside, “Bad Lament II” contains the same three-note melody now sung by Scott. “The Knife Thrower I” is the opening-credits theme song to an imagined ‘70s Italian western, and on side two, “The Knife Thrower II” could be considered the score to that imagined film’s tense finale.”
“Al Azif” features Kennedy and Wildenhaus’s solo guitars laying a pensive melody over a mesmeric sine wave loop. The name comes from H.P. Lovecraft’s “History of the Necronomicon.” In that book, Lovecraft uses the term “Al Azif,” an Arabic word he interpreted as “whistling wind” or “weird noise.” But Wildenhaus says: “My Arabic-fluent friends say it means something closer to ‘musician,’ or ‘instrument player,’ but I wanted the song to mimic what Lovecraft called ‘that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons.’ Side two’s counterpart of that song is “An Nur,” which translated from Arabic means “the light,” a Qu’ranic reference to the guiding light of Allah.”
The record employs themes of classic duality that exploit the dual-program format of the vinyl record—good versus evil, light versus dark, but as “a good little grad student” Wildenhaus says he couldn’t let duality go untarnished. “The melodies from side one slip into side two, and vice versa. Neither character [in side one’s Spanish-sung closing ballad, “Tú,” and side two’s English-sung closing ballad, “Two”] is good or evil—they’re both crazy.” The overall sound of II is crisp and deliberate. It plays out like a precise map without a note or tone in the wrong place.
In 2015, Wildenhaus played live sets of the new material in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin as well as cities throughout the Northwest. In culmination, Wildenhaus says of his recordings under the name Ben Von Wildenhaus: “Both Melodies and II are conceptual. Melodies is based on degraded audio fidelity, and II is based on pristine New York sensibility. Also, I moved to Seattle by the end of the II’s production. So if Melodies was how I imagined my ideal northwest, II is how I like to remember NYC.”
EVERYTHING IN FLOWER (2020)
In Seattle, Wildenhaus reunited with his old comrades from the northwest punk and experimental scene, including drummer Andru Creature (Reeks And Wrecks, Sugar Sugar Sugar, Lone Bird), saxophonist Jon Sampson (Bar Tabac), and bassist Aaron Harmonson (Ken Stringfellow, Evening Bell). Together they found a darker, more organic instrumental sound in dingy corners of Seattle clubs, compared to the crisp and pro sounds of the NYC band – Wildenhaus’s slinking shimmering guitar, Harmonson’s deft-70s walking jazz bass lines, Creature’s other-worldly damaged-delay suitcase percussion, and Sampson’s sultry and dirty tenor saxophone, make a sonic landscape that K Records’ Calvin Johnson described as “a creative crevice from which no one wants to escape.”
“Essentially adding myself into the Bar Tabac fold – that’s Jon’s infamous and long running bummer jazz combo – we found our new sound playing regularly at old Seattle haunts like Vito’s. Sometimes using loops, sometimes plodding through unusual charts, often improvising off of each other in deep delays and washes of reverb.”
After backing the towering and powerful vocalist Billie Bloom (another old friend from the days of Federation X) at a show in Bellingham, Bloom became a permanent member of the group. “It was instantly clear that we needed to bring our swamp noir instrumental sound to Billie’s voice to create a new kind of dark pop music – songs that could match the wet, shadowy winters of the northwest. The song writing at that point picked up where “Two” and “Tu” had left off. Except I was writing specifically for Billie’s voice.” And so, the combo was christened Von Wildenhaus in the tradition of ‘legends’ such as Kip Winger, Glenn Danzig, and Don Dokken. They spent two years in the trenches on the full-length album Everything In Flower, their most song-based album yet. Andru once aptly described it as “easy listening for demons.”
Everything In Flower begins with the delicately beautiful “Working On My Novel,” which wafts into earshot with a vaguely Eastern melismatic lilt. Not unlike the Doors’ “The End,” it bears a subliminal, seething sound that’s demonically angelic. “Drones” exemplifies the record’s eerie strain of romantic, exotic rock and slinky sophistication. Harmonson’s momentous bass line hints at the one in Argent’s “Hold Your Head Up” as Creature’s distinctively cracking beats add menace. The duel vocals of Bloom and Von Wildenhaus—the former’s vibrant and creamy, the latter’s deep and rich, redolent of David LaFlamme’s of It’s A Beautiful Day—commingle with pleasant friction. Bloom’s opening gambit—“It’s just a matter of time before we come undone/It’s just a matter of time before we fall apaaaarrrrrttttt”—captures the record’s tone of roiled feelings.
“Farewell” is louche lounge rock that would make the hairs on Blue Velvet character Frank Booth’s neck stand up. “Flowers” was written for Northwest Film Forum’s competition to perform a live soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 opus, The Holy Mountain. The song didn’t win, but Von Wildenhaus kept it in the band’s repertoire. Its lyrics paraphrase that cult existential movie’s dialogue and themes, e.g., “give up your pleasure/give up your pain/surrender your hate and what you desire/you’re not alone/the grave receives you with love.” A gorgeously morose ballad, “Flowers” possesses the elegant lurch of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Bloom’s tour de force emoting makes it a highlight.
Another standout is “Low Grey,” a nearly 10-minute Low-like dirge, tempered with sparse blues solemnity. The sublime languor is shattered by cataclysmic guitar clangor redolent of Sonic Youth’s SST years. It’s the album’s most outrageous move, a rare rupture in the prevailing exquisite poise. “Summer’s Dream” eases back into mellow jazz mode, with Sampson’s sax melody evoking a most languid reverie. It’s Everything In Flower’s most hopeful moment.
In “Working On My Novel,” Bloom sings, “I’m working on my novel/Feels like I’m almost done/I’m working on my novel/Like I’ve just begun,” forging a piquant metaphor for the restless creator enmeshed in an endlessly regenerative process. The sentiment applies in spades to Von Wildenhaus, who attained a new peak with Everything In Flower. Its strange perfume becomes your blood.
WORLD BEST (2022)
But Everything in Flower received the global pandemic treatment: a soft release, no touring, backburnered to more important things. In 2021, Wildenhaus began work on the next project, the monumental WORLD BEST album. Using a 90 minute improvisational recording Wildenhaus made with Seattle drummer Dave Abramson (Diminished Men, Master Musicians of Bukkake) and Professional Band bassist Jude Webre, Ben created two 18 minutes sides of an album.
“Dave, Jude and I jammed on the song WORLD BEST for about 45 minutes,” Ben explains, “then we jammed a slow chifti riff for about the same amount of time – a la Eddie Kochak records. I edited those down to two sides of an album. I sent 1-2 minute chunks to a ton of ripper and shredder friends and asked them to solo, deconstruct, or dissociate over it and send it back. I spent 3 months pushing it around, layering contributions, adding vocal noises, and running things through the Von Wildenhaus members’ lenses.”
The result is WORLD BEST. Side one: a propulsive, breathless and ripping guitar anxiety ride; and side two: an expansive, free-flowing, mind-melter meditation on movement. It features vocal segments from Berlin vocalist Lippstueck (Air Cushion Finish), Von Wildenhaus’s Billie Bloom, LA/NY folk witch Sondra Sun-Odeon, and the only passage of lyrics on the album from LA performance artist, singer and beautiful soul Dorian Wood. There are guitar solos by Portland guitarist Ilyas Ahmed, Seattle shredder Simon Hennemen, the one and only Bill Horist, and NYC’s Jack Martin (Pink Monkeybirds). There are two bass clarinet explosions by Olympia next-leveller Arrington de Dionyso (Old Time Relijun), a string quartet by Aaron Harmonson, and a haunting deconstructed violin melody by NYC’s Leyna Marika Papach. Several members of the Song Club Radio Hour collective make noises like bird halos (Joel Myers), brain buzz (OxyEnigma), porch drone (Caleb Thompson and Nick Bond), and a scorching Wakeman-esque from Portland’s Dustin Lanker. And Von Wildenhaus’s Jon Sampson shows how every time the sun sets over Manhattan a saxman gets their ponytail.
Film scores (2017-2022)
In addition to making albums and touring, from his time in New York, Wildenhaus’s offstage career has included scoring shorts, trailers, and commercials. In 2017, he scored his first feature length film, Here To Be Heard: The Story of the Slits (Headgear/Starcleaner), which tells the story of the groundbreaking London punk band. In 2020, he scored a documentary about the murder of John Lennon, Let Me Take You Down (MGM/SKY), which aired in the UK and Australia. 2022 sees the release of his third feature length film to score, Rebel Dread (Hindsight/Bohemia), about legendary London DJ, tastemaker and filmmaker Don Letts. Wildenhaus is now creating scores and theme songs for various podcasts in production, including Killer Tape, about the serial killer David Berkowitz. Ben elaborates, “scoring is a completely different muscle from writing songs, making albums, improvising and performing. I get to take 100% of my music experience and decision-making and put it towards achieving the director’s vision, not mine. It’s very freeing, actually.”
The Von Universe (2023)
The members of Von Wildenhaus, now including the vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Caleb Thompson, continued to play and record since Everything In Flower. Their new project is a series of 9 extended singles 3 that encompass the broad strokes that make up the Ben von Wildenhaus universe. The recordings include diverse sonic palettes such Velvet Underground-esque mellow, 3 part harmony acoustic strummers, synth-heavy electro-pop, fuzz-pedal pop uppers that bring to mind 90s bangers from bands like Pavement and the Muffs, bummer jazz downers that conjure Low, Unwound, and Adrian Younge. Beginning June 1, 2023 with the first VU single “Anna Sonata” b/w “Aluminum,” the band is releasing a new extended single every few weeks through the remainder of the year. “I appreciate the consistency of artists who stay in a lane, but in our case, what we need to say is broad and can and should be said in many ways. There’s a logic to it all fitting together, but that’s for the listener to discover,” Ben says. On his Music 6 show in 2022, Iggy Pop concurred: “[Ben von Wildenhaus] is doing his own thing in his own way.”
– Grant Brissey and Dave Segal
quotes about von wildenhaus
“Von Wildenhaus [works] his influences — modern primitive folk, cassette hiss, Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks score — into a tight confluence of meditative anti-shredding.” – Jessica Hopper, Spin
“Wildenhaus anti-prismatically recombines the worlds of David Lynch, Marc Ribot, Jad Fair, and Luis Bacalov into an oddly familiar new whole.” – Tristan Bath, The Quietus
“From country twang and psych-rock whirls to Eastern modes and pondering tones, there’s a delightfully fluid, dreamlike quality to this bizarre book of tunes.” – Elliot Sharp, Magnet
“He’s doing his own thing in his own way.” – Iggy Pop, Iggy Confidential
“..what Sun City Girls might be doing if they’d continued after Charlie Gocher’s death.” – Dave Segal, The Stranger
“…a creative crevice from which no one wants to escape.” – Calvin Johnson, K Records
“[His music is] populated with haunted spaghetti western vistas, rain-drenched cityscapes and sepulchral mariachi overtones in lieu of manic depressive, Mingus-esque chase scenes.” – New York Music Daily.
“there’s a weirdness… which doesn’t feel in any way contrived.” – Daryl Worthington, The Quietus
“The music uses sonic touchstones from the 20th century to create something that is more than the sum of those parts, but nonetheless retains something of the original appeal.” – Griffin Bur, The Rumpus
ben 