Since moving to Baltimore in 2007 with the encouragement of his friends Dan Deacon, OCDJ, and Videohippos, Benny Boeldt has made three full-length albums as Adventure and toured extensively with his own music and as a member of the Dan Deacon Ensemble. A U.S. tour with labelmate Toro Y Moi in the spring of 2011 was a fitting way to celebrate that season’s release of Lesser Known, Adventure’s second album for Carpark and its first album of pop songs. Adventure’s third LP is Weird Work, to be released in April 2013.
Weird Work is an extension of the world Boeldt created with Lesser Known, but without that record’s use of electronic pop elements such as vocal melodies and lyrics. It’s a new album of Adventure’s signature 8-bit-infused IDM. According to Boeldt, making Weird Work was about finding himself in his music again, and celebrating the act of creation. The album “is about being awkward, and anxious,” Boeldt says. “Ugly yet beautiful. Most of all, this record is about working hard, and cherishing any and all time left aside for creative endeavor.”
Boeldt grew up in Durham, North Carolina and attended East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. The school’s slogan, “Tomorrow starts here,” is an apt descriptor for Adventure’s music, which sounds both futuristic and of-the-moment. At ECU, he studied painting and drawing alongside friends and fellow future Baltimore residents Future Islands. It was here that Boeldt first developed an interest in writing and composing electronic music.
