Audio By Carbonatix
On the Dizzo Drizz Dotta EP, Benjamin Banks deserves credit not only for his selection of musical ingredients, which are as diverse and unconventional as hymnal chants and telephone rings, but also for his contextualization of those ingredients into consumable entrees. Banks has broken out of the box of traditional songwriting, and his explorations beyond simple hook-verse compositions yield mostly positive results. At his best, on tracks like “Live My Life” and “OutlawZzz,” Banks uses subtle and nuanced progressions of sound to keep the momentum going, despite the EP’s being entirely instrumental. On the other end of the spectrum, repetitive tracks like “Turn UP!” go nowhere at all. Perhaps Banks’s greatest gift is his ability to instill mechanical music with emotion. On “Love Stories (Joy ‘N’ Pain),” he moves from pain to joy and everywhere in between with simple arrangements of synthesizer and drum loops.
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