Music Collaboration & Bespoke Composition
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BIO
Benjamin J Smith, known commercially as B.J. Smith, is a versatile producer, composer, remixer and multi-instrumentalist whose storied career and varied musical projects are notable for their instinctive grasp of mood, melody and texture. An enthusiast improviser, collaborator and guest musician who has also composed for screen and professional music libraries, Smith is particularly adept at delivering emotive and atmospheric works that are as sonically rich as they are musically layered and detailed.
He began his career during his time living in Nottingham in the 1990s and early 2000s, where he featured in numerous bands and studio projects, most notably Akwaaba and Fug, as well as a collective whose members also included future Crazy P star Chris Todd. Smith would later reunite with Todd, alongside Crazy P partner Jim Baron, as White Elephant. Also lending his skills to Barons' live band JIM.
Smith is now best-known to the public for his solo work, initially as Ben Smith (see 2012 debut solo album, The Movedrill Projects, recorded with long-term collaborator Matt Klose (Crazy P/Fug) and for the last 12 years as B.J. Smith – mostly for Phil Cooper’s lauded Balearic stable NuNorthern Soul.
Since 2013, Smith has delivered four volumes of his Dedications To The Greats series, where he delivers striking new interpretations of songs from the likes of the Pharcyde, Mos’ Def, Outkast, Prefab Sprout and Soul II Soul, the two-part Between Ship & Shore EP series, and the picturesque, slow-burn wonder of double A-side single ‘Marina Del Ray/Big Sur’. He’s also released solo material on 2020 Vision and 1830 Music, most recently the gorgeous, folk-tinged and string-laden beauty of the Heard EP (2025).
The latter project featured a swathe of guest musicians, alongside regular Torn Sail partner Huw Costin, whom Smith has worked with on releases for NuNorthern Soul and Claremont 56. The latter label, run by his old Akwaaba collaborator Paul Murphy, has been a regular stomping ground for Smith over the last two decades. He’s so far released a quartet of albums with Murphy as Smith & Mudd (the first, Blue River, landed in 2007), with both being part of the label’s short-lived Bison ensemble alongside the late, great Holger Czukay (Can) and his muse Ursula Kloss (AKA Ursa Major).
The atmospheric, emotive and some would say visual nature of Smith’s work as a composer and producer has seen him become an in-demand creator of library music. He has released numerous themed works for KPM, Ultraphonic, JGM, Freshworx and Blip Trax, not only delivering music rooted in his familiar neo-folk, Balearic and downtempo sounds, but also numerous other styles and sub-genres (lounge, exotica, West Coast psychedelia, pop, indie-rock and jazz included).
In recent years, Smith has worked more extensively in music for the screen, most notably alongside Wayne Roberts on scores for Go Back To Where You Came From (Channel 4 Television) and After Eight: The Story of Saptal Ram (Black & Brown Films).
- Matt Anniss
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