~

This here be the personal website
of the versatile singer-songwriter,
doodler and hack, Ben J Shaw.

~

The short and snappy bio:

Born in hate and raised in
Blackpool, Benjamin Shaw had a lot
on his plate. After a period of particular awfulness and brief descent into
madness, Shaw escaped the Vegas
of the North and arrived in Londontown
with a bottle of port and a one trick pony.

Lurching from one disastrous Customer Service job to the next, and each day
turning to nought but filth, there was
one of two paths Shaw could take to
escape: either write the next great
British novel, boldly staking claim to all
that is good and pure in the land; or
buy a pushbike and pedal himself into oncoming traffic. Luckily, Shaw had
neither talent nor bicycle clips, and
instead sat in pubs and wrote songs.

~

Those with an inquisitive mind will find
much of allsorts in any of these places:



Things what I made:

~

There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet LP

The debut album properrr. It took forever and I haven't listened to it since,
but from what I can remember, it is something I might well be proud of one day.

Like a weekend in Blackpool, it's noisey, ugly and fairly grim at times. But like
the M55 out of Blackpool it has little shards of light breaking through revealing what may well be positivity.

It seems to have polarized people in reviews, which I suppose is good, but still a little odd when people end their piece with "..please make it stop." 

On that note, you can pick up this album in a few places. My favourite would 
 be bandcamp, but it's also available on all those other regular ones like itunes,
Amazon, etc. and also our delightfully haughty friends at Rough Trade.



Rumfucker EP

This started off as an attempt to - as the rules of International Make an Album Month state - write, record and release an album in the space of one month.

I came up with a nice initial melody and decided to try and base the the whole
thing around that. It turned out pretty noisey and it even managed to alienate the guy I buy coffee from in the mornings. So all in all, a resounding success!

You can get it for free from the Bandcamp, or if you feel like it, in one of those 'pay what you like' schemes, donate some cash monies. Some fat ones.

Actually, with the money I have made so far with this record, I have bought solely music. Mostly getting more stuff from bandcamp. So there.



I Got the Pox, the Pox is What I Got EP

The debut record, out on the wonderful Audio Antihero Records.
It be called 'I Got the Pox, the Pox is What I Got' and I can admit that it was the first thing I ever recorded that I'm actually proud of. Rock on.

You can buy it using this paypal thing here, or over at AAH's site. Or of course, at the ever wonderful Bandcamp. It's also in a few nice indie shops around the place.

It has these here songs on it. Of which there are a couple of creepy/daft films on the videos page. Made, in fact, by my good wife.

We all like attention, and some people said these things:

"Quite beautiful." - Subba Cultcha
"Fastidiously DIY in sound...A ‘name' for 2010." - God is in The TV
"Underground notoriety beckons - 8/10." - Rock Pulse
"Up there with the best of this year..." - The Music Fix
"Defiantly ramshackle. The only fear is that Shaw's style may fail to attract the attention it deserves." - The Skinny



Shipping