The Studies are a transdisciplinary artistic project; at once a performance piece, a work of video art, an E.P. of poetic pop songs and a series of lectures. Overlaid archive films act as a visualisation of the music, while a lecture - a mixture of spoken language and singing - takes place and is filmed and recorded. While the textual content is poetically transformed and conveyed through singing, a similar process occurs with the film material. By taking the footage out of context and adapting it to the rhythm of the language in correlation with a new context, many reactions between film language and pop culture language can be discovered and played with. The archive becomes, rather than a cliché, a simulacra that leaves a trail as it enters into foreign territory, leading to processing and understanding of subliminal information. The dangerous glare of iconisation, of the powerful star individual, is refracted as in a prism, in what is in fact a collective and cooperatively imagined and created work. These "studies" focus on the main themes of pop culture: society, identity and love - drawing on both a deeply personal first-person narrative and wider, analytical and self-critical gaze.

Track list:
1 The Fire
2 Are We The Flood?
3 The Secret
4 Between (instrumental)
5 Jane Today (instrumental)
6 The Fire (Yvois Remix)

All songs and pieces written by Ben Osborn
Produced by Ben Osborn and Alex Stolze
Recorded at Nonostar Studios with additional recordings in Berlin and Bristol
Performed by Ben Osborn, Bethany Roberts and Alex Stolze
Mixed by Alex Stolze
Mastered by Andreas Lupo Lubich

Ben Osborn - Studies

Between

The Secret

Nonostar Records represents not only a new musical vision, but a geographical one too. Sitting on the border of Germany and Poland, its half-renovated ruins house a custom-built recording studio, a record label and an experimental art collective. Here, select collaborators from around the world  - and from a range of musical backgrounds - combine to create the unique Nonostar sound. Producer, composer and label head Alex Stolze has drawn together acclaimed artists from the modern classical scene, cutting edge electronic producers and innovative songwriting talents to share in a vision of music that’s at once timeless and contemporary; a melancholic minimalist style characterised by spacious, immersive production and uncompromisingly original compositions. The studio on the border offers a vision of music without borders - its growing international roster and open-minded approach to genre are a testament to that.