Johnny: You mentioned Trayvon Martin and the drastically altered political climate in the US. How much of an inspiration was BLM on the album?
Benjamin: Black Lives Matter was an inspiration for the main song on the album, Witness, but the rest of the album isn’t about that at all, really. Most of the album is about trying to work through your problems and hopefully come out on the other side as a better person. I think that I had some demons that I needed to get rid of. It’s about this period where I fled and isolated myself, did a lot of soul searching, and came out hopefully a little bit better.

Johnny: It’s certainly a bit different to 2014, out there.
Benjamin: For a long time I think it was believable that people didn’t know the kinds of things that were happening on the streets every day but what’s weird now is that people do know. Everybody has camera phones and we see videos of these things happening all the time, so it’s just more about just doing something. You know what it is and if you choose now to not act, you have no excuses. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. Nobody can say that they don’t know about what’s happening. You’ve seen it with your eyes.

“Nobody can say that they don’t know about what’s happening. You’ve seen it with your eyes.”

Johnny: Do you think art will become more of a stimulus for social action in the US?
Benjamin: I do think that. Look at Kendrick Lamar, his last album… and Alright, they were chanting that at marches… I think that people just have to do that now. People are realising… when I was in school or until recently you would see civil rights videos and you would always think: “Wow, I’m really glad that we got that out of the way.” Now people are more: “Oh, shit! Not that much has really changed.” So I think that there’s more work to be done. But I feel optimistic about it.

Johnny: Being aware of that is a positive thing, at least.
Benjamin: Yeah, we’ll see what they do. I remember there was a women’s march here that I went to and there was a sign that somebody had that said, “Now all you nice white ladies are going to be at the Black Lives Matter march, right?” I don’t know. People look out for their own interests, so I don’t know who’s going to be the person to pull people together, you know. There’s not really a leading figure. I guess there’s Bernie Sanders… we tried, we tried.

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