How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack Ben McElroy

• 1 Store Away For A Winters Day 03:27
• 2 How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack 05:43
• 3 Hedgehogs 02:03
• 4 From Time To Time 08:19
• 5 See More 02:07
• 6 Bed Down In The Murk 04:52
• 7 Wolves Dance 06:34
• 8 Collecting Bone Dust 05:42
• Total Runtime 38:47

Info for How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack

Ben McElroy first made music as a teenager experimenting with cassette recorders. His adult process may have upgraded to a laptop, but his primary tools remain doggedly lo-fi: accordions in such a state of distress that they fall apart before the end of a song, disintegrating audio equipment, plus well-worn string instruments, whistles and guitars. All often come together to create a shivering seabed of sound: when his barely there vocals appear, as they do on the title track, it evokes a haunting.

How I Learnt to Disengage from the Pack recalls the ambient/indie-folk of groups such as Epic45, with technology adding texture – although McElroy’s tunes are often cast in more traditional clothes. Store Away for a Winters Day features a fiddle pivoting and swooping over a pretty soft drone, while Hedgehogs begins like a piece of 8-bit rural weirdness (carrying hints of the Ghost Box record label’s output) before blossoming into something straighter, but still playful and free. See More engineers webs of bright guitars before the tune turns into a processed, enveloping shimmer – suggesting a dazzle in communion with the natural world – while Wolves Dance yomps with grit on its boots, leading off from a cello towards whistles that create their twisted Celtic lament, accompanied by scattershot hand drums. (Jude Rogers, The Guardian)

Ben McElroy

Ben McElroy
is an ambient/folk musician originally from The Wirral but now residing in Nottingham. He combines acoustic instruments (guitar, viola, clarinet, whistles and vocals) with a laptop to create folk inspired soundscapes.

His last album ‘How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack’ received folk album of the month in The Guardian in January this year, described by Jude Rogers as-

A shivering seabed of sound, haunted by barely there vocals and stitched together with lo-fi production – McElroy has made a beautiful early year listen

The album also received positive reviews from Folk Radio UK and A Closer Listen amongst others. Iggy Pop also played a track on his BBC 6 Music show last year.

Ben has been writing music since his teens, with just a basic grasp of guitar and recording, but over the years has honed his sound, bringing in more instruments and finding influence in artists including Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, Richard Skelton and Brian Eno.

This album contains no booklet.