Hubble

Since the inception of his new solo guitar project Hubble, Ben Greenberg of Zs and The Men has sought to exploit the guitar for its ulterior qualities, simultaneously displaying a true love for the instrument while redefining how guitar music is understood. Whether distortion-drenched or clean, Ben describes painstaking result as “cyber-dread”, an apocalyptic, beat-less quasi-electronic music, conjuring Terry Riley’s pulsing minimalist structures and Gregg Ginn’s aggressive, avant-garde rock.  The first full-length record Hubble Drums is set for release on Northern-Spy Records in November 2011 in support of which Hubble will tour extensively throughout the US and Europe.

About  the Hubble live performance, Ben expounds, “Every Hubble set, on a stage or in a friend’s basement or in my bedroom, is a concerted effort on my part to change the air in the room, to push it towards a state of greater resonance.”  Using mesmerizing guitar mastery to create extended rhythmic patters of note groupings of varied tempo, dissonance, and harmony, Ben hypnotizes the audience with slowly developing, subtle variation, until the listener is lulled into a highly vivid dream state.  The set varies between a versatile and simple set-up and the more ambitious Hubble Superposition, a quadraphonic experience that splits the guitar signal into four different singals which are routed through four seperate amplifiers.

Ben’s first release Hubble Linger (NNA Tapes) brilliantly utilized the cassette format by distilling a live performance into two side-long pieces of stereo-panning guitar.  The tape was well received inciting electronic musician Keith Fullerton Whitman to claim “…I’m fairly floored by this extended solo-trance-out from Zs guitarist Ben Greenberg, who seems to have invented a device that halts time (musical, actual, and meta-physical) ; its use is put to great effect across this 60-minute blast of cycling “stereo” chord progressions and assorted haze(s) that approaches the fervour of MBV / Belong’s filtered-out high-gain wash while retaining the minimalist patina of Charlemagne Palestine piece … awesome.”

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PRESS

“At once heady and visceral, psychedelic and intensely lucid, Hubble’s mesmeric guitar webs are laser-etched incantations to the sublime. At the luminous crossroads of John Lee Hooker and Philip Glass, this is virtuosic and visionary sound-sculpture that kicks the concept of what is music just a little further down the road. There is something new under the sun. Just listen.” - Michael Azerrad

“Hubble’s euphoric wheedlechurn is where the measured precision of downtown minimalism meets the unhinged aggression of Brooklyn loft noise–truly hypnotic and truly New York.” – Christopher R. Weingarten

“Under new solo alias Hubble, Ben Greenberg of Zs and Pygmy Shrews has been channeling his formidable guitar chops into distortion-drenched, loop-based compositions that lovers of distressed ambience will be more than happy to zone out to. He just released his first cycle of material on Burlington’s VT’s NNA Tapes– also home to Driphouse, Julia Holter, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Caboladies, among other AZ faves — and we’re having a hard time believing that there is not a single synthesizer on Hubble Linger– or strings, or timpani. Check out an extended excerpt from the cassette below (selected by the Greenberg himself), along with some words from the artist on why we probably shouldn’t listen to his music on headphones.

“Every Hubble set, on a stage or in a friend’s basement or in my bedroom, is a concerted effort on my part to change the air in the room, to push it towards a state of greater resonance. This is why Hubble recordings are really meant to be played out loud, over speakers, which was a difficult decision for me to make as I’m definitely a lifelong headphone addict. With Hubble Linger, I wanted to create a version of Hubble that could be a slow burn, like a Townes Van Zandt song or an Ornette Coleman ballad– something that creeps into your brain and just hangs out in there, lightly throbbing as you go about your day, but then every once in a while the throbbing skips a beat, or speeds up a little bit, and all of a sudden your entire perspective, your entire sensory experience, is different forever. At least until the music ends.”

– Emile Friedlander, Altered Zones

“It doesn’t really matter what state you’re in, if your town is in America and remotely large, you’ve probably seen Ben Greenberg play at some point. From the likes of such shredding punk bands as Pygmy Shrews, Cutter, or The Fugue to the techy and undefinable Zs, Little Women, and Archaeopteryx, massive amounts of touring (and bands) have established Ben as one of the best underground guitarists you can see live. HUBBLE is his new solo project: guitar, a couple pedals, and two loud amps. When you watch him perform parts from the album-length piece, one of the most striking things is realizing how excited you are to watch someone play guitar that can really fucking play. And makes rad, new music!!!” – Terroreyes.tv

DISCOGRAPHY

• Hubble Drums (2011) [Northern Spy]
• Hubble Linger (2011) [NNA Tapes]