Hiking Is a Deception: A Conversation with Ben Wulkan from Lunar Vacation
[UNPUBLISHED] Hello, Ben Wulkan. Famed bassist for Lunar Vacation. The face of experimental project H4CK. One part of Atlanta duo Nuface. Welcome to Unpublished! How have you been?
[BEN WULKAN] Hello. I’ve been pretty good. Pretty chill, not too much.
[UNPUBLISHED] Mm. Oh no. You've been away.
[BEN WULKAN] I have been away.
[UNPUBLISHED] And not in school.
[BEN WULKAN] Yeah. Not in school.
[UNPUBLISHED] Away, away. You’re nationwide. And you and Lunar Vacation have been hiking.
[BEN WULKAN] No, not as much as you think. The hiking, it's all a deception.
[UNPUBLISHED] Well if you haven't been hiking, what have you actually been up to?
[BEN WULKAN] For the past couple of months, I’ve been touring with this New Zealand band, the Beths. Lunar Vacation was opening up for them. It was a very cool, unique experience. It was a very COVID cautious tour though, which made it very difficult to navigate. We started touring right after the wake of the Omicron variant, so we basically couldn't go out or hang out with anybody on the entire tour. We couldn’t risk getting sick, so we would get tested for COVID every other day. It was pretty intense; very hard mentally too. We spent a lot of time inside the tour bus.
[UNPUBLISHED] And that's why they hiked.
[BEN WULKAN] It’s funny because when we were agreeing to do the tour bus, we were hyped that we could go on hikes or go out - actually, not even hikes just walk around. On our days off, we would look forward to getting out of the bus - that way we could stroll and enjoy space, you know? There's only so much to do in places like Pearl, Mississippi.
[UNPUBLISHED] Well, now you guys are going to Europe for a headline tour, how different will that be? And how are you feeling?
[BEN WULKAN] I've actually never done a headline tour, so I’m pretty frickin excited. We won’t have a tour bus this time around, but we’ll have a van AND a driver.
[UNPUBLISHED] That’s high-tech. Speaking of high tech, you make music under H4CK as well, which is completely distinct from Lunar Vacation’s scene and genre. How do you feel about playing with these contrasting sounds?
[BEN WULKAN] Yes, the musical spectrum. Oh, god, I just have a lot of different avenues for my creativity. And H4CK to me is like way more of “me” and it's kind of also my computer-controlled project. So, it's almost all digital, except I use field recordings and sound recordings that I make. And I also have a few synthesizers that I incorporate into H$CK, but for the most part it's all on the computer. And you can really hear that because the music is very saturated. There’s not a lot of space to breathe, not a lot of strong melodies. It's extremely hard to grasp on the end of the musical spectrum. In my opinion, H4CK is just very percussive and it says a lot with rhythm. I really just like sampling drums and programming drums on a computer. It's so much fun and I don't do that type of stuff with Lunar obviously. But, it's funny because with bass, you're sort of bridging the gap between harmonic and melodic motion and rhythm. So, Lunar is my sort of way of adding melodic stuff to music, more so than I do in H4CK. But it's also like still being rooted in rhythm, which I love. So yeah, it's pretty cool. They're both really fun. I also have another project called Nuface. We just had our first release. It's a duo between me and my friend Evan. It's very different from H4CK and Lunar. Evan's a rapper, but he's also a singer. And we've always made music together. But, we finally put a name to our joint project. Before, it would be H4CK and Danger Don’t Dwell, but it didn’t sound like any of them. We're real collaborators - it's just our own sound together and it's called Nuface: every project is completely individual. Like every time we approach music, it's like we get a completely different sound usually.
[UNPUBLISHED] Do the constant collaborations ever feel overwhelming, considering you’re in a band and also in a duo project?
[BEN WULKAN] It can sometimes be overwhelming. But the thing is that no one who I work with gets too attached to certain things. Ego is completely out of the picture. If we’re in the studio, everyone's equal and everyone’s opinion matters. And you really need that type of environment when you’re making music.
[UNPUBLISHED] Very true. And, so, for the sake of background - how did you get into music in the first place?
[BEN WULKAN] Out of nowhere I really, really wanted a guitar when I was seven years old. I don't know why…one of my friend's dad was a guitar player who was in a band, and we'd sometimes go see him jam out, so maybe that had something to do with it. But, music has just always been a big part of my life. When I was eight, I took lessons from my family friend, the dad who played in the band. And after that, I became obsessed. I played and practiced every day. When I was 11 I was in this rock blues band back home in Atlanta called Scene of the Crime. And that was very helpful for my development because I was already playing in bars and clubs at that age - I think that gave me perspective.
[UNPUBLISHED] Any other artistic mediums that you utilize?
[BEN WULKAN] The only other one that I can really think of besides music is painting. I paint for fun, just sometimes. Actually, this is a fun story. Not actually that fun. It's pretty boring. Last semester, I was very busy. I was constantly flying back and forth from New York to Atlanta for school and band practice with Lunar and Nuface. It was hectic and my brain needed to let out somehow, you know? So when the semester ended, I didn’t have as much stuff to do so I picked up painting. I started with watercolor because I'm a very messy painter.
[UNPUBLISHED] I can see your pants. Ben has painted pants on right now, for reference.
[BEN WULKAN] Yes, it's actually from a painting I did like three years ago and I was, again, very messy. It was me following a Bob Ross tutorial and I was getting frustrated. So, I was just smearing everywhere and it got all over my pants. But, anyway, watercolor is such a free-flow type of medium. Like, I didn't have to think about anything. And I enjoy that - I get to keep my mind engaged. That’s my only other creative outlet, I’d say, besides music.
[UNPUBLISHED] Are there any current trends or influences going on in the music industry that you dislike?
[BEN WULKAN] Let me start with the state of hip hop and rap. 454 is incredible. I discovered him through Frank Ocean’s luxury store website Homer. But, I like him because he’s good. He's standalone. Frank Ocean showed me him, but I don't like him because Frank Ocean likes him. Now, this was merely an introduction - let's talk about Baby Keem. A lot of people know about Baby Keem because of Kendrick Lamar. And a lot of people have quite literally said to me, I like Baby Keem because Kendrick loves him. And, that shouldn't be the case. Keem makes really good music and I remember everyone freaking out about him being self-produced, which is sick. But, I do think that it's a bit overhyped, mostly because Kendrick condones him. Keem for the most part has dry vocals and beats. Nothing is really saturated, which I think is a style. But rap has become so much more like pop, in a way that it’s become way more appealing to the masses. And Keem is definitely part of this trend. Artists like Gunna and Lil Baby are now extremely pop, it almost feels fake. Rap should be able to exist on its own without having to appeal to a certain group. You shouldn't have to change it to try to get the widest audience, unless you want to get rich - which I understand. But, anyway, that's why as much as I dislike Playboi Carti fans, I do appreciate that Playboi Carti has a refreshed, unique sound.
[UNPUBLISHED] It’s stan culture that fucks everything up. We should cancel stan culture.
[BEN WULKAN] It is kind of insane. Honestly, you should just stan your friends - people that you actually like, it’s quite literally authentic. Your friend isn’t going to manipulate you into thinking that they're the greatest artist of all time.
[UNPUBLISHED] I'm a stan of you, Ben.
[BEN WULKAN] I'm a stan of you, Andrea. But, for real, I’ve been forcing myself to stop stanning. It’s so easy to consider these artists gods just because you really love their music: they turn into perfect human beings in our heads. And I don't want to worship just anyone, you know what I mean?
[UNPUBLISHED] You’re so right. Stanning really just ends up affecting your whole persona - especially if you’re young, you want to start dressing up like your favorite musician or listen to music that they listen to or behave like they do.
[BEN WULKAN] Exactly.
[UNPUBLISHED] Last question. What have you been listening to lately? And do you have any recommendations for us?
[BEN WULKAN] I've been having a hardcore SoundCloud obsession where I've just been going on my SoundCloud weekly and finding new artists. I strictly release music on SoundCloud, so I should support. I like to find independent artists and people who are just like me sharing their projects. The SoundCloud algorithm is amazing because it's not just promoting people signed to a certain label, it's promoting quite literally anyone. There's this one artist named healings who I’ve been obsessed with. I discovered them through a remix they made of Lady Gaga’s Just Dance and it popped up on my SoundCloud weekly. Freaking incredible. I think they also have a separate project called miniskirt, but I’m not entirely sure that they're connected - they might just be separate people who are friends. And then also I've been listening to a lot of Aphex Twin and his second account. Oh, and The Slaps! I went to their concert recently, probably one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. They make timeless music. Their last record will go down in like ten or twenty years from now as being considered one of the greatest cult albums. You’ll see.
[UNPUBLISHED] Well, readers, you can now stream Ben's favorites and also his own projects, Lunar Vacation, H4CK, and Nuface.
[BEN WULKAN] We actually recently released Nuface’s first EP Keep On Walking, so definitely check that out. All of the stuff we release on Nuface is conceptual. Keep on Walking is all a storyline. Evan is rapping as somebody else, as this guy named Young Raspy, who is this kid from New York trying to make it as an artist. And so basically it's his demo tape for New Face Entertainment, which is like a label based out of Atlanta. We even went into underground hip hop Reddit as Young Raspy telling people that his demo tape was coming out. It’s basically like an augmented reality type of project. And we have two more EPs coming out soon - they both have storylines as well.
[UNPUBLISHED] Let me hear it.
[BEN WULKAN] The second EP, which is coming out in this month of May, is called Advanced Wave Memory. We basically made all the songs with just a keyboard that we got from Goodwill, a Yamaha PSR 85 advanced wave memory. It’s like the popstar of this augmented reality and it has no samples at all. It's quite literally all audio files. The third EP is called Race the Globe, it’s more hyper pop centered - that’s all I’m going to say for now.
[UNPUBLISHED] Shoutout being busy, shoutout Keep on Walking.
[BEN WULKAN] That was a good one. Never heard that one before. We also have CDs for Keep On Walking on Bandcamp.
