Benjamin Long

We were lucky to catch up with Benjamin Long, commonly called Benji. Benji is a producer / instrumentalist from the UK. He describes himself as “Quite a simple guy really”, and in between a fulltime job it’s all about music, sport and pints mostly, and chilling with his girlfriend and cat, of course! He currently resides in Tottenham, although he considers south-east London to be his home. Whilst growing up, he used to go to Fabric a lot. “Big nights out, discovering dance music for the first time… those were the days!”

When we asked Benji about his production style he said that it was Jazzy, pretty dusty and organic sounding. He always tries to bring a bit of a live feel so most keys you hear are audio recordings from his synths and Nord, un-quantized and a bit sketchy – just how he likes it.

His favourite Djs and Producers that have inspired him are artists such as Chaos in the CBD, Soulphiction and Mood II Swing – which he describes as the groovy classic sounding stuff mostly. At the moment he has been heavily into Slow Life the last few years. As a label they keep it real, mix up the styles but everything they put out is quality, in my opinion. Benji states that S.Moreira is a bit of an idol!

After playing at Tola last year in Peckham, which he describes as a small venue with a banging sound system, his next gig is at a night he has run called Marbles in September. Marbles takes place in Peckham at Carpet Factory, which is a really nice new club. They have been doing these nights for literally a decade now so it’s supposed to be great fun and they are hoping they get some heads down!

Benjamin has a new a four-track ep coming out in a couple months, the date is still to be confirmed. He reveals the EP contains a mix of styles and he’s also been sitting on a lot of demos that he’s trying to finish.

Whilst talking about tracks, we asked Benjamin about his first track. It was on the Closer To Truth ep, called Dusty. He had found a nice chord sequence online, learnt it then he built the track around it. The name of the track comes from the Dusty Springfield sample, which he says is a bit cheesy, but it worked. What he takes from it though, is that he made some breakthroughs on it production-wise and was stoked when it got signed during lockdown.

He feels his best work was the ltd/wlbl release, probably between I Need Your Love and City Strife – He worked at both of them so long he wants to give Kudos to the head honcho of ltd/wlbl, who really pushed me on them. The tracks wouldn’t have otherwise got to where they did, and even though he hated them by the end, he now looks back on them very fondly!

Benjamin is currently sitting on lots of nearly-finished demos; they probably won’t come out until next year but watch this space!

We would like to thank Benjamin for his time and wish him all the best in the future. Check our his back catalogue here