BenC's Audiobooks

This enchanting audio extract reunites readers with the Snowman and introduces them to a new best friend, the Snowdog. Read by Benedict Cumberbatch, star of The Hobbit and the TV series Sherlock.

The Snowman and the Snowdog: Extract read by Benedict Cumberbatch

Benedict Cumberbatch narrates the conclusion to ‘Flat Of Angles’, the story by Simon Cleary that has spanned the previous three editions of Late Night Tales (Friendly Fires, Royksopp, Bonobo). 

Late Night Tales: Django Django is released 12th May.

iTunes: goo.gl/oCfZrk
Late Night Tales Webshop: goo.gl/HyYIZ.

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Django Django is the latest band invited to curate a prestigious Late Night Tales collection. Like many of the best British groups, the Djangos met at art school, specifically Edinburgh College Of Art, before reconnecting in London. Django Django released their self-titled debut album on UK independent label Because Music in early 2012 to some acclaim, winding up in many critics’ end of year lists (Top Ten in the NME and Top 30 in Rolling Stone, among them) and a Mercury Prize nomination.

Their oddball approach to music, which sounds like the rich harmonies of the Mamas & Papas beamed through a refracting prism pointing towards Bo Diddley, Chicago house and outer-space (it’s no surprise to learn that Django producer/drummer Dave Maclean’s brother John was in the Beta Band, who also shared the same cinemascopic view of the pop landscape). 

“Rollicking sing-alongs, galloping into disco sunsets like whisky-addled and leather-saddled bandits on the stolen backs of prairie wild mustangs,” is how Django Django describe themselves. Which is another way of saying they’re pop adventurists, as at home with Mad Mike’s Underground Resistance as they are the blues rumble of Canned Heat. A bit like this delightful mix, then, which darts about like a gurgle of guppies after two too many espressos.

Check out mixes that rock between two-step delights like Roy Davis Jr’s ‘Gabrielle’ to Nilsson’s lyrically winsome ‘Coconut’. At one end of the Django spectrum there’s James Last, the terminally unhip Teuton, whose ‘Inner City Blues’ shows you can never underestimate the Germans, while at the far reaches of the mix, they manage to sneak in Ramadanman (‘Bass Drums’) and Hudson Mohawke and Lunice collaboration TNGHT’s ‘Bugg’n’. You can hear the echoes of influences in some of the selections, like The Beach Boys whose peerless ‘Surf’s Up’ makes a welcome appearance halfway through, while Seals & Crofts’ ‘Get Closer’ show what sun-drenched pop can sound like when it’s done well. 

And because it’s Late Night Tales there’s a sparkling cover version of ‘Porpoise Song’, the theme from The Monkees daffily brilliant ‘Head’, an admirably lysergic termination to this waltz through pop’s nooks and cranberries. “You should never be afraid to make a fool of yourself for art,” Dave Maclean once said. Let’s raise a dram to Scotland’s favourite fools on the hill. 

“We wanted to produce a mix that represented the band. It’s what we’re all into, so everyone put forward suggestions. It’s what we are as a band; and we’re kids that have grown up with an obsession about our mum and dad’s record collections, like ‘50s and 60s stuff and then got into hip hop and dance music as we grew up. At the heart of it all is our parents’ collections, with our tastes mixed in. Our Late Night Tales pays homage to that.” - Dave Maclean (Django Django)

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Benedict Cumberbatch reads Flat Of Angles (Part 4)

Benedict Cumberbatch (Casanova) 1/5

Benedict Cumberbatch (Casanova) 2/5

Benedict Cumberbatch (Casanova) 3/5

Benedict Cumberbatch (Casanova) 4/5

Benedict Cumberbatch (Casanova) 5/5

The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting, consoling journey to discover the meaning of time. Read by Benedict Cumberbatch.

'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come.'

Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.

With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time -- and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves.

The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli, read by Benedict Cumberbatch

This is an excerpt from the audiobook "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli, read for you by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Learn more here: https://bit.ly/2Hpl11w

From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a concise, elegant exploration of time.

Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike.

For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe.

Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.

"A dizzying, poetic work." --The Guardian

Late Night Tales: Friendly Fires presents Benedict Cumberbatch - Flat Of Angles (Part 1); a spoken word piece.


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Buy the compilation

Benedict Cumberbatch reads Flat Of Angles [Part 1] (Late Night Tales: Friendly Fires)

Introduced by Peter Donaldson, Recorded by Adam Low, Martin Rosenbaum & Edit Store, Edited and Mixed at dBs Music'I have written a blasphemous book', said Melville when his novel was first published in 1851, 'and I feel as spotless as the lamb'. Deeply subversive, in almost every way imaginable, Moby-Dick is a virtual, alternative bible - and as such, ripe for reinterpretation in this new world of new media. Out of Dominion was born its bastard child - or perhaps its immaculate conception - the Moby-Dick Big Read: an online version of Melville's magisterial tome: each of its 135 chapters read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, to be broadcast online, one new chapter each day, in a sequence of 135 downloads, publicly and freely accessible.Starting 16 September 2012!For more info please go to: www.mobydickbigread.com

Chapter 58: Brit - Read by Benedict Cumberbatch - http://mobydickbigread.com

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - Part 1

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - Part 2

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - Part 3

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - Part 4

Benedict Cumberbatch reads Shakespeare's 'The Seven Ages of Man'

Benedict Cumberbatch reads Sherlock holmes  An Inscrutable Masquerade  part1 3

Benedict Cumberbatch reads Sherlock Holmes  An Inscrutable Masquerade  Part2 3

Benedict Cumberbatch reads Sherlock Holmes  An Inscrutable Masquerade  part3 3.wmv

The second part of the four-part Late Night Tales story 'Flat of Angles', written by Simon Cleary and read by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Order: http://latenighttales.co.uk/product.php/200/r-yksopp-late-night-tales
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/late-night-tales-royksopp/id643663833

The new edition of Late Night Tales journeys to Scandinavia to invite Norwegian duo Röyksopp to delve through their record collection. Their Late Night Tales mix is eclectic, diverse and wonderful. Sliding from light folk to widescreen ambience to experimental rock to prog-pop (seasoned with the occasional guilty pleasure); it’s all in the spirit of the night.

Following the exclusive introduction track 'Daddy's Groove', Rare Bird's beautiful 1975 B-side'Passing Through' then leads into Australian supergroup Little River Band. The first of several delicate folk moments, it's joined by the ever soulful John Martyn. There's a strong representation of alternative European sounds. Röyksopp mine deep and wide to unearth the rare and unusual German psych-pop of Richard Schneider Jnr (featuring none other than Can's Jaki Leibezeit on drums), France's unique F.R. David and the new age melodies of Switzerland's Andreas Vollenweider - it's pop Jim, but not as we know it. There are also the more familiar names of XTCand Thomas Dolby, as well as Röyksopp's exclusive cover of Depeche Mode's 'Ice Machine' and brand new track opening Daddys Groove. The music draws to a close with goth-dream-pop 4ADfounders The Mortal Coil's Emmylou Harris cover 'Till I Can Gain Control Again'; blending into a cinematic moment from German electronic avant-garde band Popol Vuh, contributing to the soundtrack of Werner Herzog's 1972 movie Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The second part of theBenedict Cumberbatch narrated story 'Flat of Angles' closes time on this coolly individual edition of Late Night Tales.

Follow Late Night Tales:

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Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/latenighttales1
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Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/curator/late-night-tales/1233898093
Bandcamp: https://latenighttales.bandcamp.com/

BenC's Audiobooks

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