Michael J. Benjamin is an intriguing, new, young artist. Michael is of Dutch origin but was raised in Sweden until the age of 16, his soulful songs express a hard-won authority; embracing the world with an engrossing, truth-seeking style of writing which belies his still tender years.

He says: “I was born and raised in a nowhere town, stuck in a place you don't want to be in, where there's no sense of identity, where you don't fit in. Music shaped my world from an early age.”

Like other millennials, Michael grew up with the entire history of music at the click of a mouse, and immersed himself in the works of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney. Twenty-first century heroes manifested themselves in the shape of Lana Del Rey, Weyes Blood and Jack Antonoff.

Keen to travel, he played guitar, piano and harmonica in small venues in Bristol, London, and the Isle of Wight through his late teens / early twenties. Michael Benjamin got his first break in 2017 when he was invited by the Dutch National Ballet to provide music for “Two and Only”, a pas de deux dance for two men. This was very well received and went on to be awarded Runner Up in the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse at The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The piece, with Michael’s live accompaniment, was performed at The International AIDS Conference, Amsterdam in 2018, in the presence of Bill Clinton, Elton John and Harry, Duke of Sussex. This coincided with his first appearance on Dutch television. If Michael Benjamin’s musical heroes are mostly American, his literary influences have a distinctly European flavour: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Hugo. His songs flourish in a self-made world of creeping dusk and the foreboding, Lynchian, darkness which will inevitably follow. These are songs about the fluctuating times in which we live - the interwar years between this conflict and the next one, and the changing of the guards.

Michael J.Benjamin’s new music has been recorded and produced in London with producer Jon McMullen, who is best known for his work with Wet Leg.