Release Radar: Benjamin Fisher releases nostalgic ‘What It Was’ through The Good Times Co

Benjamin Fisher is a sensational young artist that we are proud to introduce to the world. His first single was released independently, but listening to that first release the natural talent is clear and abundant (I Don’t Need No Other). 

To really experience the sonic force that is Benjamin Fisher you need to see him playing his instrument of choice. His tall frame set straight on the stool, his fingers flying back and forth, he doesn’t so much play the piano as embody an instrument he’s been playing since he was a young child. 

It’s visible, too, in his latest single, his first through Netherlands-based The Good Times Co. “What It Was” is the kind of song that emerges so fully-formed it’s hard to imagine that this is only Fisher’s second commercial release. Riding on an easy groove and backed by a steadying beat, the song trades in nostalgia (“Well I just need it all to go back to what it was”) but is as far away from nostalgic pandering as you can get. Instead what Fisher offers up in this embrace of a song is a modern world that is streaked with melancholy but that ultimately moves towards a heroic pinnacle where all things can be at ease - all carried by his rich, warm voice. 

Fisher inhabits “What It Was” with the irresistible confidence of an artist  who’s  born to it. Which, in many ways, he was. His first memory of hearing music in a way that wasn’t just as someone receiving it but as something he wanted to be part of came when he was about five or six years old. He was listening, as young kids do, to a children’s song that his teacher was playing through a CD player. When the song finished and the rest of the class moved away, he sat there transfixed, enthralled, feeling the magic of what was coming out of the small music player.