José Benjamín | “Sketching In Pen” Shares His Soul in the Palm of His Hands
There’s something about vulnerability that creates the magic of authenticity out of thin air. The fragility of human essence is something we’ve grown to cast aside in exchange for a very animated, aggressive, and energetic contemporary music scene. How does an Artist challenge the very anti-emotional status quo expected to be upheld by our Music standards? José Benjamín’s release of “Sketching in Pen,” from his debut LP “Pictures I’ve Taken,” is a haunting testament to the slowly dying disposition of Melancholy, and the conviction of being affected, being fallible, and being human.
“10 Cigarettes on a Thursday, It’s 4 am the next week, and you think you’re beautiful”
If 23 year old Caracas, Venezuelan native José Benjamín wasn’t a recording artist, from lyricism alone, one would jest he’d be a painter. “Sketching in Pen,” is an imagery laden, ghostly vocal performance accompanied only by a keys accompaniment also played by José. It’s reductive allure and dressed down approach defines the nature of the Record itself. The quality of recording is almost granular in texture, a synthetic live performance that puts you front seat in his sunlit Brooklyn Studio loft, photographed keenly by Jess Farran, the cover art of the LP. José processes minimally, his voice as natural as possible, adding Justin Vernon-esque falsettos drenched in reverb with warm poetic – waxings of his own dispositions, casualty and minimalism, and cigarette atmospheres.
The production on the entirety of the project belongs to Benjamín only, a self conceived, self prepared, self released Debut. It’s genre-less organic components create an atmosphere of relatable thought, personableness, and honesty. The primary Record and single, “Sketching in Pen,” is crafted to similar personal affect and taste and these laurels certainly illustrate versatility in talent and artistry, but the story itself is in the poeticism of indulgence and escapism. How do you rectify the difficulty of a complex and ever unstable world with simplicity? I reached out to José personally to find the catalyst for a very, “of self,” piece. When inquiring about the inspiration for the record, José gave this statement:
“Sketching In Pen was a poem I wrote while I was having trouble sleeping one night. I [lived] on a futon in a windowless room with no kitchen and I kept thinking about how I had very few comforts in my life at the moment.”
He confidently insisted these dire straights led to the thought:
“…I remembered I could find solace in simple pleasures, even if they might be “bad” for me”.
The poetic and wistful enchantment of the Record is a derivative of the fact that, “Sketching in Pen,” was in fact an actual poem. Hip-Hop traditionally draws its essence from rhyme and meter, inherent poetic elements, but converting a free-verse stanza into a modern composition and then a self produced coherent record is a much more refined process, especially when dealing with structure. Themes and building blocks from this original work, the preconception for the song by Benjamín, included:
“… smoking cigarettes [to] afford [myself] an excuse to be alone” and “Staying out so late… just to escape my living situation”.
José mulls on his love of, “sketching things [he] saw in his notebook,” and rejoices in the permanence of pen, a looming thematic concept translated into the identity of one who must cling to small pleasures to peer past the gloomy infinity of existing and the engraving in stone of our own actions, feelings, and occurrences. Who are we when we’re reduced to our last, our fewest, our least? Benjamín retains agency and sanity in vice indulgence and self discovery. There, in the throws of being nothing more than himself, he weaves a telling tale of making the best out of nothing or everything. We all need a breather, and on, “Sketching in Pen,” he delivers the exhale of novelty, durability in the face of adversity, and a slow dance in the afternoon with his own demons. But instead of speaking on them, he blows them away with the puff of tobacco and the tension in his fingers spread expertly across aged piano keys.
You can hear, “Sketching In Pen,” and the rest of José Benjamín’s project below.