Hi ~ ~ my name is Ben Seretan.
I make music - different types, more often than not with a guitar, some singing, some songs, sometimes with a band or other people. I like things that are long or too much or over the top or too personal or bursting at the seams. I like music that changes very slowly over time or is repetitive. I like things that like life. I like music that changes a room and performances that acknowledge their particularity.
My most recent project is an LP on Tiny Engines called Allora, aka “the insane Italian album.” We recorded it in the summer of 2019 during a hectic, cathartic, and charged two-and-a-half days. It’s an album of guitar exorcism, very jammy, very sloppy, full of life at its messiest and most neon.
I like playing normal shows at venues but I might prefer more unusual or more intimate places - I’ve played in an apartment bathroom with a mattress in it and at pop up roller rink in a former greeting card factory, but I’ve also played in churches, living rooms, galleries, olive groves, and once standing on the wheelhouse of a tall ship that was anchored off the coast of Maine. I am open to basically whatever if you’d like me to come play in your space and you’re not lame.
Currently I’m running a project called My Big Break - a newsletter with writing and a new slice of freshly recorded music every Thursday. You can subscribe to that here.
Last year I put out an album-length track of celestial rippers with my buddy M. Geddes Gengras - our band is called Friends Meeting and the recording really sprawls out, cosmic chaise lounger.
Also earlier last year I put together a Bandcamp-only compilation of tracks I recorded for My Big Break, called it Heaven is a Void Between Load Screens. They’re really evocative and kind of lonely but to my ears they carry a deep warmth, too.
In 2022 I was commissioned by Tiny Showcase to put together four weeks worth of writing and music - the result is sandhills music, a cassette tape that soundtracks the emotional wallop of a storm rolling in one afternoon in North Carolina. You can read the entire text + listen to the music here.
My most recent kinda more traditional album release is called CICADA WAVES - a collection of serene, barely-there piano recordings I made while the cacophony of nature raged all around me one summer in Georgia. You can listen to it here.
I live in Climax, NY right now but I lived in NYC for a a long time, lived in Connecticut for a while, and I grew up in California, which I think about a lot. Right now I work doing basically a little of everything for Basilica Hudson. I take freelance work recording stuff, designing stuff, writing stuff, etc (don’t be shy). I also still do live sound sometimes, mostly at the Avalon Lounge.
Here are some other things you might find interesting about me:
My undergraduate thesis was a collection of short essays about Arthur Russell paired with a concert of interpretations of his work
I once sang some of my songs at the national gallery of Albania
I am a certified notary public in the state of New York (update: my license lapsed)
I once shook hands with Neil Young and he made fun of me (in a nice way)
I lost 60 lbs in 2018 (and probably gained it all back during COVID)
I have a stick and poke tattoo of the Del Taco logo
I briefly cared for a famous turtle professionally, I also once worked for a painting dog
I briefly starred in a web series about a professional cuddler