New Research: Ben Greenberg

Ben Greenberg has been obsessed with making and recording music for most of his life. Despite still being in his 30s, Ben counts an astonishing number of credits to his name as a musician, producer, engineer, and mixer, and the diversity of those credits is as staggering as the number itself. Ben began his career working in professional recording studios and touring at the age of 15, which certainly played a role in how prolific he’s been, but his range as a creative is something truly remarkable and difficult to define.

As a musician, Ben is a classically trained guitarist that studied composition at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Ben creates experimental solo guitar work under the name Hubble, but is best known for his involvement with the defiantly uncompromising industrial-hardcore band Uniform and for his time playing with beloved Brooklyn rock ‘n’ roll favorites The Men. He’s also performed with heroes of outsider music like the late Glenn Branca and composer Terry Riley.

Ben’s time on the other side of the studio glass has seen him work with a litany of artists that are seemingly unified only by a desire to push the boundaries of their work in some way. Some of his most notable recent studio credits include working on the lion’s share of releases from tastemaking Brooklyn label Sacred Bones, working with people like Marc Ribot, Depeche Mode, and the legendary Danny Elfman. Since opening Circular Ruin Studio in Brooklyn with partners Randall Dunn and Arjun Miranda, Ben’s been taking on an increasing amount of work honing and mixing film scores, including providing the final mix for Benny Safdie’s critically acclaimed film The Smashing Machine.

While it’s nearly impossible to easily define Ben’s fingerprint as a creative, much of the work he’s done embraces a palette of ugly, subversive sounds to remind people that there’s a dynamic range that exists beyond their comfort zone. It’s something that’s caught the attention of increasingly higher profile collaborators, but there’s much more to Ben’s world than noise for noise’s sake.

Chance Operations’ David Von Bader recently spoke with Ben to discuss his approach to collaboration, the virtues of keeping it simple, the silver lining of the insidious AI music revolution, and the economics of making a living as a creative in the internet age without selling your soul.

David: You seem to