Recently I was featured in the September 2007 issue of Insite Magazine. Rad!

http://www.insiteboston.com/music2.html

Or, here.

Benefit Friends
A One-Man Electronica Band
by Thom Plasse

Band members are inconvenient. Anyone who has played music with a group of people can attest to the myriad of complications that arise when two or more creative people set out to collaboratively create music. Egos clash, feelings are hurt, no one is satisfied, etcetera, etcetera. Not to mention the schedule conflicts. A computer, or a piece of hardware, is the most reliable band mate a musician could ever hope for. A sequencer doesn't resent it when you tell it to lie back on the beat a little, or that maybe it doesn't need to play on that second verse. With the incredible drop in the price of such technology in the past few years, as well as the alive and well individualistic DJ culture, more and more musicians are seen on stage in front of a mess of cables, plugs, and indeterminate hardware rather than vying for personal space on a ten square foot stage with a drum kit, a vocalist, two guitarists and a bassist.

Schuyler Stone, AKA Benefit Friends, is a veteran of more traditional "bands," but has in the last few years dove full on into the burgeoning electronic auteur scene. Of course, electronic music has since its inception often been a very individualistic genre, because of the control that musicians can have over the piece, as well as the ability of technology to replace band members. But it has been only more recently that former hardcore kids have jumped ship from the repetitive and meathead-istic style of music to the more wide open world of Electronica, a nebulous genre is ever there was one. Benefit Friends is a postmodern mish-mash of the heavy rhythms and tempo changes of modern hardcore, affixed to the tropes of danceable, practically club-friendly, traditional electronic music, with some hip hop and a pop sensibility added on to keep things interesting. Oh, and samples taken from David Lynch films and other equally terrifying sources.

The mild-mannered Schuyler Stone operates out of Allston, but often returns to his native Connecticut for shows at, in true DIY hardcore tradition, VFW halls and German Clubs. Schuyler's set-up is centered around a sequencer that allows him to trigger the layered loops that make up his songs live in real time, making his shows feel more like a true performance than many of the navel gazers in the electronic scene that seem to be hiding behind their PowerBooks through their whole set. Not to mention the hand-soldered and modified children's toys he builds himself to add a unique sonic, as well as visual, dimension to his performances. But Schuyler is phasing out this because "it can get a bit gimmicky." Fair enough, but it can throw a dancer/reveler for a loop (in a good way) when she realizes she's dancing to a modified toy raygun than sounds like a distorted snare run.

Benefit Friends is a music that is best appreciated in the live setting. All though Benefit Friends is not an old-fashioned band, Schuyler has developed his growing fan based the old-fashioned way: playing shows and selling hand-made merch to newly converted fans. His artistic progression has thus far gone from aggressive music that borrows more from hardcore to pieces in more traditional "song" structure, centered around his often creatively processed vocals. But there'll still be a breakdown or two for those of you in the pit rather than on the dance floor.

For more info, visit www.myspace.com/benefitfriends.