Benjamin Stokes Steps Out From the Shadows With a Vinyl-First Solo Project

Benjamin Stokes has spent much of his career shaping other people’s images. He has directed music videos for Nine Inch Nails, Public Enemy, Ministry, The Orb, and Meat Beat Manifesto, the band he also plays in alongside Jack Dangers. He has created visuals for DJ Shadow’s live sets and worked on the M.I.A. and Janelle Monae hologram exchange that placed the two artists on opposite American coasts simultaneously. Dimensional Holofonic Sound, however, is his alone.

“I love collaborating with people but I think every artist needs a solo project,” Stokes says. “Something that is their own signature and unique flavor.” The project’s new album, Concept Record, takes that idea literally. The concept, as Stokes puts it, is that the record is the concept. The double-vinyl edition, cut with Anne-Marie Suenram of Suenram Productions in San Pablo, California, includes fifteen lock-groove loop tracks. Suenram, whose company is the only woman-owned and operated cutting and mastering facility of its kind in North America, says it was the only record she has done with this kind of cut.

Stokes trained in art school to make objects, and he describes the album as “a big love letter to vinyl itself.” That physical focus gives Dimensional Holofonic Sound a different register from his collaborative work. He was in the middle of preparing visuals for DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing 30th Anniversary tour when he spoke about the project, a reminder that his visual career continues. But with Concept Record, Stokes is no longer supporting someone else’s frame. He has built one of his own.