The Vision

The Vision

Some pairings have auspicious beginnings. Anglo-American production duo Ben Westbeech and Kon first met in 2002 at a festival in Southport while Detroit DJ royalty Moodymann watched on, eating a bag of fish and chips. It took the next 18 years for the pair to hone their formidable musical partnership. Hailing from the seemingly disparate worlds of singer-songwriting, house and hip-hop, the duo’s music under their The Vision moniker has a precise bent. For their eponymous debut album, Westbeech and Kon hark back to the joyous ’70s disco and soul of Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Sylvester’s dance-floor hedonism with the help of a roster of carefully selected faces: DJ Honey Dijon, jazz luminary Roy Ayers and longtime collaborator Andreya Triana. “The fluidity and movement through rhythm from live instruments is what makes great music—the rhythm is life,” Westbeech tells Apple Music. Created over the course of four years, between Amsterdam, London and Detroit, the resulting album seamlessly shifts from the joyous, fist-pumping house of “Mountains” to the funk-laden title track, celebratory disco of “Satisfy” and boom-bap of “Home”. “We wanted to do something that was honest, that had depth and that would stand out as representative of our eclectic tastes. We put a lot of expectations on ourselves,” Kon says. Read on for the pair’s thoughts on their album, track by track. Remember (feat. Nikki-O & Andreya Triana) Ben Westbeech: “I worked on the instrumental and then flew to Detroit to record Nikki-O, who is a poet and a singer. We were in this massive studio but it didn’t really feel right writing in that environment, so a friend of mine offered up his bedroom studio and that vibe really sat well with her poetry. And then we got Andreya Triana to just jive over it as a little introduction to her on the record. It sets the tone for everything to come.” Mountains (feat. Andreya Triana) BW: “‘Mountains’ is something I wrote with Andreya and another songwriter called Dee Adam about four years ago. It was actually intended for a different project but it ended up fitting in nicely with the sound of The Vision. We tailored it more towards a soul and disco feel and it ended up becoming a single, which I was really happy about. This song is about finding inner strength in yourself, which is really important at a difficult time like now.” Down (feat. Dames Brown) Kon: “1979 and 1980 were very impactful years in my life. My mother had me at a very young age and so she’d take me with her to the disco on Saturday nights and I’d be the only seven-year-old in the club! My mother knew the people that ran this roller skating club and being that age and witnessing records like Off The Wall and Chic being played there blew my mind.” BW: “Dames Brown thankfully said yes to doing this. They are three ladies from Detroit who are old-school soul singers of the highest order. They just jammed all over the top of it and it ended up becoming another great tune.” Missing (feat. Andreya Triana & Ben Westbeech) BW: “Andreya has the low end of a veteran singer and so having that old soulful voice was so important to the record and she’s someone who I’ve collaborated with many times in the past. When she said yes to doing it, I was just over the moon. Andreya and I had a lot of fun recording this together, it was a real vibe in the studio. It was the first time we’ve done a duet so it was great to have that collaboration happen.” Time Kon: “Ben and I have a love for hip-hop and I did a lot of hip-hop production back in the ’90s. People like Marley Marl, Pete Rock and DJ Premier are my influences and their masterpieces all have little beats in between the tracks. I wanted to bring that flavour to The Vision.” BW: “It was a nod to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….., which was a really influential record for me, being one of the first albums that was made from samples. We just really wanted it to become a listening experience as an album, to be encountered as a whole.” Wasting (feat. Ben Westbeech & Roy Ayers) BW: “I heard ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine’ when I was 15 years old and it changed my life. We were sitting in the studio one day and I just said, ‘I wonder if we can get Roy Ayers on this song?’ Someone had a connection to his daughter, so we got the track to him and he said yes. I remember hearing the news and running around screaming because he is one of the ultimate people I have always wanted to work with. It took two years to get him in the studio, but when it happened in London it was one of the best days of my life. I was trying to hold back the tears at one point when I got to sing with him.” Believe (feat. Ben Westbeech) BW: “I’m incredibly into psychedelic rock and acid-tinged music, so this was a nod to that style and wanting to write a song with beautiful harmonies, using a Lennon-esque reference. It’s a song about having to find inner strength in times of struggle.” Kon: “I would travel to Amsterdam over the five or so years that we made this album and stay with Ben to record, initially doing everything in the same room and then putting things together by sending tracks back and forth.” Façade BW: “This was a reference to a compilation called Off Track, which Kon made with the producer Amir back in the day [2007], and that got sampled by a lot of hip-hop producers like DJ Premier and Mark Ronson. This is another outro and palate cleanser after ‘Believe’.” Paradise (feat. Ben Westbeech) BW: “‘Paradise’ is very influenced by the Mizell Brothers, who were a US soul production team. Me and Kon are fanatics for the records that they produced in the late ’70s. Kon: “They’re in my top three production teams, since I first discovered them in the early ’90s with their work with Bobbi Humphrey. Anything they touched was golden. When I played this demo to Ben, it developed immediately. This was the second song we made for the record and it’s one of my favourites.” Nebulous BW: “This track has some more chunky beats—it’s one for the heads and it’s also quite psychedelic when that synth comes in. It’s a moment before we move into the crescendo at the end of the album. It was important to have this middle section of the record more stripped back, a slow-jam movement before we head into the full-blown party of ‘Satisfy’.” Satisfy (feat. Ben Westbeech, Honey Dijon & Andreya Triana) BW: “We’ve been close with Honey Dijon for a while and on ‘Satisfy’ we’re talking about one person wanting to go out and the other not wanting to. We thought she’d be a brilliant fit to bring in a Sylvester style. We did a swap with her where I’d done a tune on her album and so she did this vocal. It was wicked to have her involved because she’s a huge influence on house music and a real soldier for human rights and for being proud about who you are.” Heaven (feat. Andreya Triana) BW: “With the lyrics for these collaborations, we’d end up normally sharing the duties with me writing some choruses and then Andreya or others coming in for the verses. For ‘Heaven’, Andreya really brought the fire. The track actually ended up being played on a protest march against Trump and his handling of the US election in New York, which is amazing.” Tenacious Kon: “This sample just spoke to me. It’s often said, ‘Don’t screw up a good loop’. You might feel lazy as a producer for not adding more or changing a loop but you can do too much and ruin its essence. With this I got sucked in and I just wanted to use it in 50 seconds of pure head-nod.” Home (feat. Andreya Triana) BW: “‘Home’ is about getting back after dark from the club and finding that place of comfort, where you can just be yourself even if you’re feeling lonely.” Kon: “I’m in a big group chat with Questlove and Swizz Beatz and lots of other producers and a few years ago Questlove was emulating famous drum breaks on his kits, recording them live through his iPhone and just sending them on the chat. He sent me the drums that you hear and they had the perfect feel for this track. It has a very boom-bap groove to it, almost like Amy Winehouse or Lauryn Hill could have recorded it. It’s the perfect end to the record.”

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada