Seminal Sydney Indie-Pop muso Ben Lee surprised everyone yesterday, dropping a ‘mixtape’ of songs he had recorded but not released, that is absolutely chock-full of surprise guests and collaborations.
The 11-track album called A Mixtape From Ben Lee features appearances by Zooey Dechanel, Ben Folds, Sally Seltmann, and Neil Finn just to name a few.
In a post that accompanies the album, Lee explains that the formations of this album first begun in 1998, as part of a personal songwriting project he was undertaking. In the 7 years following that, he recorded the album with Sam Spiegel (Squeak E Clean) intermittently, allowing friends and collaborators to filter in and out of the creating and recording process. Lee saying that “I am grateful to everyone who played a part in these recordings, large or small, remembered or forgotten.”
“For some years these recording just sat on my hard drive. I have always loved the recordings, but life moved me in other directions and distractions, and the release of the “Mixtape” recordings were temporarily shelved.”
The album is now available on Bandcamp for $1 (but you are encouraged to pay more if you wish), with proceeds for the album going towards the Inkarri Cultural Organization, a charity that aims to preserve and protect ancient cultures, in particular the Q’ero people of Peru.
In the liner notes of the Bandcamp album, Ben Lee wrote about the charity saying “As someone who believes that our successful journey forward as a humanity is intimately related to our staying connected to the true wisdom of our past, The Q’ero project has become a real passion of mine. The uncontaminated psychological and spiritual information that has been passed down generation to generation by the Q’eros is at risk of being lost if we do not offer our support and protection to their process of integration with the Western world.“
Ben Lee’s new release ‘A Mixtape From Ben Lee’ is available now on Bandcamp, with proceeds going towards the Inkarri Cultural Organization
