Hurt Records, and a Talk with Its Founder

[Uni assignment, scroll on if you're here for games. :)]

I made a playlist recently. This playlist contained all the music I have on my phone that was released by, or artists represented by, the independent label Hurt Records. It comes up to 1,240 minutes, or just under 21 hours. That's no small amount of music.

Hurt was founded in 2014, though the music you can find there stretches back to 2007. Amongst its archive, you can find nine albums, 11 EPs, and a wide variety of singles, from artists including Two Down, Quiet One, and Portraits. Again, no small amount, and even more impressive considering six of the seven acts represented by Hurt are bands/projects created or partially created by the same person who founded the label.

That person is Ben Slack (more commonly known on the internet as Benn, or Benn Down). I recently e-mailed Benn and sent him a mass variety of questions relating to Hurt, his music, and his other ventures.

The oldest project in Hurt’s repertoire is Two Down, a rap/rock act consisting of Slack and Callum Richardson (also known as ‘Kroman’).

“We were both studying music and one of the assignments was to create some sort of song. That song ended up being Revelations and a few weeks later we tracked Origins?”

‘Origins?’, the first album by Two Down, was an experiment of sorts, ‘written and recorded in 22 hours’, according to its CD booklet. Experiment or not, it led to Hurt’s most prolific and successful band. 10 years later, Two Down has four more albums, multiple EPs, and many other songs scattered around the web. They’ve covered many genres of music in this time, never playing it safe or consistent.

Two Down | Benn (Left) and Callum/Kroman (Right)

“We never really wanted ‘a sound’. We are both nutters so every time we come together we make music that reflects our mood at that time. That is why some of our previous work flows so horrendously.”

Their latest project is an EP that looks set to be yet another example of that variety, for which they’re venturing into the realm of pop, and are looking for funding through Kickstarter.

Two Down isn’t the first Hurt project to be using Kickstarter for funding. Portraits, a progressive rock/metal band consisting of Benn and American lecturer and archaeologist John Williams, did the same to fund production costs for their first album, 2016’s ‘Monad’. The target for funding was set at $7,500 dollars (or just over £5,500), and it was reached successfully, a sign of Hurt's popularity, and fan dedication.

Portraits | Benn (Left) and John (Right)

“I assumed that we definitely wouldn’t reach that financial goal. I was extremely surprised when we did. Thinking back to that, I really loved that process. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so connected to the listeners as I was back then.”

Monad was a concept album which followed, according to the official Hurt description, “how humans have reflected on themselves and the world around them. How intellectual curiosity materialised in different ways at different times”. This materialises in songs concerning Ancient Egyptian writing (‘Seth’s Bane’), Ancient Greek technology (‘The Antikythera Mechanism’), and Native American vision quests (‘Axis Mundi’), among others. The album is immensely technical, and I won’t (read: can’t) even attempt to accurately describe the specifics of it.

“Neither John or I can remember who reached out to who in the beginning but we both found each other on YouTube (somehow) and the rest is history.”

Whereas Portraits is by far the most musically complex project of Hurt’s, on the other end of the spectrum, is Quiet One. Quiet One is a solo project from Benn, the debut album of which (released in 2014) was the first album released by Hurt after its founding. And as the name suggests, it has a much more stripped down and sombre feel compared to the generally louder, more energetic works of Two Down and Portraits. It’s also the most personal of his projects.

“In a way, it makes it easier to write because the ideas are completely formed as memories when I think about them. I think the hardest part of writing songs from Quiet One is being honest…Don’t get me wrong I’m always honest when I write lyrics but that is when honesty is easy. The times that honesty is difficult are the moments that I’m not proud of or the moments that leave me feeling down.”

'Quiet One' album cover

Songs like ‘Follow Me’, ‘Black Hole’, and ‘Take Me Away’ (from the ‘Quiet One’ album) all evoke these feelings of poignant honesty, and collectively, along with Quiet One’s subsequent singles and EP release, they make up some of the most introspective works Benn has released.

Hurt’s most anticipated project at the moment comes in the form of the ‘Z’ albums, also a solo project from Benn. These albums started life as a YouTube viral campaign (consisting of a series of videos like this one) inspired by the Call of Duty series, specifically its ‘Zombies’ mode by Treyarch.

“It would have worked with any game and any fanbase, but it just so happened that some of our colleagues at the time worked for Activision and Ubisoft and, so we have always had a constant outpouring of information surrounding releases of both publishers.”

In 2012, Benn’s album ‘Zombies I’ was released, and was intended to be the first in at least a trilogy of albums that continued the storyline set up in the campaign. However, after its sequel ‘Zombies III’ (yes, ‘III’, not a typo), the third album in the trilogy (‘Zombies II’) never released. After numerous delays, Benn eventually, largely due to dissatisfaction with the released records, decided to reboot the whole thing.

No stranger to quick turnarounds after some of the Two Down releases, Benn started work on ‘Z.1’ (the remade Zombies I), in early 2017, and now, in early 2018, he’s close to finishing Z.4, the fourth album in the rebooted series. Z.1 was released in August 2017, Z.2 will release next month, and Z.3 and Z.4 will both release later this year.

A teaser image for the upcoming 'Z.2' (Released 02.02.18)

“In its simplest form, the story’s main motif is the concept of loss and how it affects those in the fray. Beyond that, it was a complicated web of deceit and inhumane research that had never previously been illuminated. The protagonist is an older gentleman who loses his family early in the story. He is a journalist who is tasked with infiltrating a very large and very domineering organisation, to hopefully present their darkest secrets to the wider population.”

The Z project is likely Hurt's most popular, helped in part by enthusiasm from fans of the Call of Duty mode (and Benn’s YouTube gaming venture PlayTheGame), and the project has evolved to be much more than music releases. Each album has an accompanying event fans can attend, with each taking place in a different location around the UK. There are also plans to release a novel following Z.4’s release that takes the story further.

“The Z:events are really important to me. For me, they go hand in hand with both the book and the records. I always knew that I was going to create events for each album, but I never quite realised just how far I was willing to go to f*ck with my listeners.

Z.1 album cover

“I haven’t mentioned much about the Z novel in the public sphere yet. I’m really excited by it; it’s my first foray into authoring anything other than lyrics and boring emails.”

On which of his musical projects he is most proud of, Benn says “right now it has to be the Z records. I am proud of most of the music that has been created since Hurt was established. So much time and care is taken with each song/release that it’s hard not to grow fond of everything. The response to Monad was probably the most inspiring though because that was a genre that I knew absolutely nothing about…the fact that we weren’t immediately gunned down for ‘trying our hand’ at progressive rock was astounding to me.”

Benn, and by extension Hurt, has released a wide array of music, even if you just count all the music released in the (almost) four years since Hurt was established (Z.2 will be the fifth album released under Hurt). Again, quite a lot for one person to be involved with.

On what helps him stay so productive, he says, “I read a lot; articles, books, research papers, anything I can get my hands on really. I like to keep my mind moving at all times.

“I make sure I lead a relatively interesting life. I like to go and experience things that ply me from my comfort zone. I like to throw myself into things that I have absolutely no experience in.”

A dangerous way of living perhaps, but Benn seems no stranger to risk. A small independent record label is no doubt a risky venture, yet there’s no doubt Hurt has seen some incredible success since.

“I think so far we have exceeded pretty much every expectation; we had a strange start with the last Two Down record as we ordered something like 11,000 copies too many and so instead of worrying about it I wrote it off and I went with a group of five friends and we stood outside the flat where I live now in Charring Cross and we just handed them out to people walking by. Literally all the remaining copies. The amount of emails I had by the end of the week about the record incinerated any negative emotions I had a few days before.“

Coming up on its fourth anniversary in March, and with multiple releases on the horizon, the future looks bright too.

“Expanding isn’t on the agenda for Hurt. All I want it to be is a reliable platform for people to find music that they can enjoy.“