Former As It Is guitarist Benjamin Langford-Biss announced the launch date of his new solo project today. In a tweet, he stated “fuck it going to be launching my new project on May 15th including LP/cd bundles & a video.” He continued on saying, “I wanted to wait until I got 100% confirmation will be hitting Spotify and such but if it doesn’t I’ll just leak the song that day anyway.” Unlike his previous releases with As It Is, this new album will be entirely self-produced from the tracking and mixing all the way to the distribution of physical and digital copies. 

In November 2019, As It Is announced the departure of their rhythm guitarist. After a week-long tour sending Ben off, the former guitarist assured his fans that he would keep on making music. Earlier this winter, Benjamin wrote on his Twitter that he was taking a brief social media break until he had something he could release. On March 18th, 2020, Ben broke from his hiatus to check in with fans, yet it was not until almost a month later on April 8th, 2020 that Ben mentioned anything about his new project. “Here’s the deal. I have an ep all tracked (just vocals to go but producing your vocals is hard) I have the project and ep name. It is coming together. No singles. No rollout. No merch (yet). Just me. Just going to drop it as soon as it’s ready.” A few weeks later on April 22nd, 2020 Benjamin tweeted, “Only thing left on my list of things to do is final mixes and await final artwork. If this isn’t out in May then I’ll probably have died in a vortex not knowing when something is finished.” Lucky for us, Ben not only survived the vortex of mixing and mastering, but has grown his original EP into a mini-LP. Another Twitter update confirms this fact: “What started as a 4-track ep is now going to be an 8-track mini-lp.”

We do not have a name for this anticipated mini-LP, yet we do know from multiple tweets that the album will have an Elliott Smith influence and will include a raw acoustic track. Ben Langford-Biss describes the LP as “an existential crisis in music form.” Another review comes from his former bandmate, Patrick Foley (drums in As It Is), via a text message in which Foley responds to the album as “Mate. This is sick. I’m on track 3. So far everything has been dope.” Multiple fans have shared their excitement for the solo project. As May 15th approaches we will for sure be keeping our eyes out and ears ready for this next chapter.