The Chaos is the Point

Ben makes music the way some people breathe: constantly, compulsively, without asking permission.

He’s released more albums than most people have birthdays.

Songs that glitch and whisper. That hum like loose wires. That sound like they’re falling apart and somehow still work.

I don’t like my music sounding ‘polished.’ That’s stuff for other people.

For Ben - aka Hello Whirled - chaos isn’t the problem.

Chaos is the process (and the whole point).

This is the story of how it started, how it never stopped, and why the cracks in the sound might just be the truest part.

It Started with the Beatles

Ben doesn’t talk about “getting into” music like it was some phase, playlist, or some cute little origin story.

Music didn’t arrive. It was already there.

My memories start with me already being obsessed.

The obsession had a name: The Beatles.

But this wasn’t some childhood fan phase with posters and pretend accents. It was deeper. The kind of love that rewires you.

The Beatles were proof that sound could be structured AND freedom.

They made me want to write songs from a very young age, and I certainly tried.

Where other kids were memorizing multiplication tables, Ben was memorizing chord progressions.

Not because someone told him to, but because it made sense. It made him make sense.

Hello Whirled didn’t start as a career move. It started as release. As noise he couldn’t hold in any longer.

And now? He’s released more songs than most people will ever have thoughts.

Albums, EPs, stray one-offs - like paper trails of a brain on fire.

It’s the one thing in this world that I’m the best at and I enjoy it.

He doesn’t say it like a flex.

He says it like someone who’s made peace with their purpose. Someone who’s not chasing polish or praise, just the next sound that keeps him breathing.

Raw on Purpose, Chaos by Design

There’s something about Hello Whirled that sounds like it wasn’t made for anyone but him.

Not in a selfish way, in a true way.

Like these songs existed before there was a listener, and he just pressed record fast enough to catch them.

Ben doesn’t try to clean things up. He’s not here to polish and package.

He’s not trying to make your Spotify algorithm happy.

He’s trying to make something honest.

You can hear it in every vocal crack.

In the guitars that fuzz out and fumble forward.

In the way a song might open like a diary and close like a collapse.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about getting as close to the feeling as possible, even if it hurts.

The process is pure chaos, but it’s the kind of instinct he knows how to dance with.

Many of my songs start as guitar improvisations...I very rarely write the lyrics and music together.

Sometimes the lyrics come weeks later.

Sometimes they don’t come at all.

Sometimes they fight with the music like two people who used to love each other.

And somehow, it works.

Because the goal was never harmony, it was truth, and the truth is rarely in tune.

He writes like someone catching a thought mid-breakdown, mid-epiphany, mid-bite of a memory that’s still sharp.

The songs don’t resolve.

They unravel - and that’s what makes them feel so alive.

For Ben, the storm isn’t something to survive.

The storm is the point.

Compliments, Collages, and the Spillover Projects

Ben gets weird compliments all the time.

People tell him his songs sound like bands he’s never listened to - or worse - bands he doesn’t like.

But he’s not agitated about it.

I don’t have to like that you think I sound like Neutral Milk Hotel, but you liked it, and that’s more important.

The first person who ever really loved his music thought he sounded like Beck.

He’d never heard a Beck album. Still hasn’t.

But that guy’s favorite song? A random B-side Ben barely remembered putting out.

Which is exactly why he releases so many of them.

What’s a throwaway to him might be someone else’s favorite song in the world.

There’s a kind of trust in that.

A willingness to let the mess live.

That spirit - the let-it-all-out, see-what-sticks kind of energy - is carrying into his next full project.

It’s called Distance Fighter.

No songs are finished yet, but he already knows what it’s going to feel like.

It’ll be patchwork. Fragmented. Something between a mixtape and a memory. A collage in every sense: sonically, emotionally, structurally.

And then there are the side projects.

Hello Whirled is me alone. Side projects are me and at least one other person.

Names like Embalming Druid, Bushworms, the Flying Spizucos, the Crawling Visitors.

Each one sounds like a glitch in the matrix, and each one is its own universe.

They’re not experiments so much as echoes - extensions of a mind too full to stay in one container.

Listen - when the floodgates are open, you don’t argue with the water.

You just start naming the rivers.

Inputs That Aren’t Instruments

When you ask Ben what shapes his music, he doesn’t say the typical things other musicians say like heartbreak, politics, or long walks with a notebook - though all are meaningful to him and certainly influence him.

Ben is no stranger to sharing his stance on politics or being vulnerable online (while also educating the masses).

Yet the biggest influence, he says, are video games.

There’s something about world-building that gets to him - something about a soundtrack that pulses in the background while the player figures out who they are.

Maybe that’s what his music is too:

Not a performance, but a playable environment. A mood you have to move through.

Lately, he’s been on a manga and graphic novel kick.

The kind of stories where everything’s exaggerated but somehow still true.

Visual chaos. Emotional clarity. That’s his language.

One of his albums - Falling Short of Heaven - is the name of a Fire Emblem paralogue. It doesn't end there though:

I did release an EP of covers of 'songs' from support conversations in Fire Emblem Three Houses which has to be the nerdiest thing I've ever done and will ever do.

But he says it like it’s a confession.

He pulls inspiration from strange corners: weather, conversations, misheard phrases, passing glances.

Nothing is too small. Nothing is wasted.

Everything is fair game once it’s filtered through that restless brain of his.

That’s the thing about Hello Whirled - the references don’t always make sense on paper.

But when you hear them?

You just get it.

Songs Without End

Ben isn’t chasing virality.

He just wants to write the next song.

And the one after that.

And the thousand after that.

I’ve lived the quieter life. I could go for loud.

He says it casually, but it sits heavy.

He’s not imagining a future built around fame — he’s imagining one built around sound and those who just…get it.

More songs. More noise. More cracks that let the truth sneak out.

Performance still stumps him sometimes.

He’s still trying to figure out how to bring this thing - this deeply internal, often chaotic, always solitary thing - onto a stage in the way he envisions it.

But the writing? The recording? That part’s locked in.

He’s not planning some grand arc.

There’s no masterplan.

He just knows this is what he was built to do and he’s not done yet.

Some people write songs.

Ben leaks them.

And the flood’s not slowing down.

🌐Find Hello Whirled

If you’re ready to step into the chaos - the kind that hums, cracks, and hits you right in the chest - here’s where to start:

Bandcamp

YouTube

Instagram

Stream the songs. Save the B-sides.

Get lost in the feedback loop and maybe, find something true in the mess.

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