17 February 2023
Benjamin Haycock blends melodic, percussive and fingerstyle guitar with honest, personal and accomplished lyricism that is up there with the best. He laces this with incredibly tight rap flows and raw, emotive and powerful singing vocals. This is all interwoven to create a truly unique sound with strong character that derives from his personal experiences growing up in inner city Birmingham and later Devon, UK.Starting out, Benjamin was the songwriting front man to a successful eclectic band that performed at the likes of the 02 Academy and the Institute in Birmingham, which included instrumentation from the likes of ‘Little Comet’s’ drummer Nathan Green. In 2018, he released his debut solo acoustic EP called ‘Time’s Transgressions’. Off the back of this, he was announced as one of ‘Fender Undiscovered Artists of the Year’ and performed at Ad Week Europe, on the same bill as Craig David. Throughout this time, his music videos were watched by hundreds of thousands of people on large Facebook platforms such as ‘Music Crown’ and ‘YFM’.In 2021, Benjamin appeared on ‘The Voice UK’ and astounded the coaches by doing an emotional rendition of his original song ‘Restlessness’ that he wrote as a letter to his late Father. Suffice to say, all four of the coaches turned around. He subsequently released ‘Restlessness’ as a single, which topped the iTunes singer-songwriter charts. He followed up this success by releasing his second EP ‘Enigma’s Quay’, which followed suit.After this period of success, Benjamin subsequently partnered with Australian guitar company ‘Maton’ and became one of their prestigious artists and global ambassadors. Some names on their roster include the likes of John Butler, Tash Sultana, Josh Homme, Keith Urban and Neil Finn.Benjamin finished the year with his single ‘Force for Nature’ which he released in collaboration with The Tree Council’s environmental campaign ‘Be a Force for Nature’. The music video premiered to over 1,000 schools as part of the programme, with the song later featuring within the prestigious NOTION magazine. Subsequently, Benjamin was commissioned to produce a musical composition for a film which was displayed at the COP26 Climate conference in Glasgow. He finished the year with over 1.5 million Spotify streams, and over 100,000 listeners.Benjamin has started 2022 strong, with the release of his single ‘Homeless Winters’, which he partnered with the biggest homeless charity in the UK, Shelter. He committed to giving 50% of the proceeds from the song to helping homelessness within the South West. The music video was filmed/directed by Jonathan Pears, who has worked on some large films over the years in LA and was fresh off a set with Morgan Freeman and Gerrard Butler. Such was the quality of the video, it was released on VEVO in March.