Notes
'Interludes abound, a very large sound-picture is evident...Technically precise without sparing any melody or feel...progressive, profound...Breathing Water in a Dream is overflowing with interesting ideas.' - MusicEmissions.com 'The fuller, longer, flowing compositions on this album are where this band truly shines. The first two tracks are a wonderful one-two opening punch of mature (at times post-rock influenced) instrumentation, progressive songwriting, and artistic expression.' - DecoyMusic.com Relax. This dance is like a movie scene. It's like breathing water in a dream. You feel relieved and realize this is not real and you cannot die. The Benzene Ring play big Smashing Pumpkins guitar rock, dreamy Danny Elfman fantasies, prog rock largesse à la Tool and Yes, and rich emotional Sunny Day Real Estate textures. Sometimes they are moody and introspective, other times impassioned and loud, always melodic. The songs are long, the arrangements idiosyncratic. Your active attention is rewarded. The Benzene Ring are an ambitious five-piece from New York, ferociously creative. They create twisted puzzles, games with indecipherable rules but an internal logic, dreamscapes that end abruptly at craggy gray cliffs plummeting to the sea. They draw pictures in your head. BIO Composed of Jeff Aldrich (vocals, guitar), Eric Hertenstein (keyboards, guitar, vocals), Hwarg (guitars), Eric B (drums), and Daniel Gunnard Beamish Gibson (bass), the Benzene Ring formed in late 2001 when Aldrich, Hertenstein, and original bassist Erin Barlow met in New York. The three bonded over a shared passion for an out-of-print book called The Gates of Lethaenox, and soon learned that they also shared an interest in the mathematics of magic and hypnotism as applied to music. They began to collaborate, arranging ideas and fragments into intricate songs. The music combined visceral outbursts and strong melodies with dissonance, ambitious song structures, and in-your-face dynamic shifts. Uninterested in playing for other people, they spent several years honing arrangements. They played their music in pitch blackness and invented convoluted games and rules to confuse one another, most notably the Lethaenox Continuum game, which would later inform much of their songwriting and the hidden clues in each song. In the fall of 2003, Hertenstein and Aldrich, walking along a quiet tree-lined Brooklyn street, found Hwarg sitting on the sidewalk with a beat-up acoustic guitar, furiously playing a dissonant, chromatic riff. Impressed by Hwarg's prowess, Hertenstein and Aldrich asked him, 'What time signature is that in?' Hwarg stared them down and whispered, '27,' and the friendship was formed. In early 2004 Hwarg and Barlow ran into Eric B (literally) in a bar fight on Manhattan's lower east side. He was unintelligible at the time, but after the chemical madness had wore off he was grateful for their help, and upon learning about the Benzene Ring offered to fill the spot as drummer. In late 2006 Barlow left and was replaced by the band's longtime friend Daniel Gunnard Beamish Gibson.
