Mister Speed

Mister Speed – ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’

Sydney based Benjamin Speed has a very impressive music resume, according to his Wikipedia entry. As one half of the hip hop duo The New Pollutants he performed in Big Day Outs and Adelaide Fringe Festivals and released a fair few records. On top of that all that he teaches music and composes original film scores. So he’s pretty much a musical all rounder, and it doesn’t surprise that he decides to step away from hip hop with his new project as Mr. Speed. His new album The Dreamer is very cut and paste sample fare with lots of world sounds and catchy beats. It ranges from the upbeat playful hip-pop, to rock and roll numbers, to the chill out variety songs, and the arty statements type of songs.

He’s got an ear for sample based hooks with a world music variety and a liking for old instructional TV interview out takes. The singing style has a bit of roleplaying suggesting some sort of theatre background. It’s quite hard to choose which song to showcase , there’s quite a few gems in this release. So I’ve picked this one that I’m guessing is the radio single. To be extremely generalising he’s very much like Gotye, they’re even on the same label. So if you dig Wally you should check out Ben.

www.myspace.com/mrbenjaminspeed