Igloo Magazine :: Chit Chat with Benjamin Stokes of Dimensional Holofonic Sound

Inside Ben Stokes’ vinyl obsession

Benjamin Stokes could exist solely as a collaborator with other artists and his resume would remain an envious one. He has directed music videos for giants like Nine Inch Nails, Public Enemy, Ministry, The Orb and Meat Beat Manifesto, the latter of which he’s also a band member alongside industrial dance music pioneer Jack Dangers, whom Stokes additionally collaborates with in another outfit called Man From Mantis.

He has created visuals for DJ Shadow‘s live sets, directed hype video for the Dallas Cowboys, and even helped pull off the feat of M.I.A. and Janelle Monae performing as holograms at each other’s live shows, simultaneously, on opposite coasts of the United States. And this is only a small scratch on his winning lottery ticket of collaborations.

Dimensional Holofonic Sound (DHS) however, is singularly Ben Stokes. “I love collaborating with people but I think every artist needs a solo project,” he says. “Something that is their own signature and unique flavor.” I spoke with Stokes—ironically as he took a break from creating visuals for DJ Shadow’s upcoming Endtroducing 30th Anniversary tour—to talk about his new DHS album, Concept Record, AI art, love of acid music, and any upcoming plans for live shows.

“[Concept Record] is kind of like a big love letter to vinyl itself,” says Stokes. “I mean, the concept is, ‘The record is the concept.’ It’s all about vinyl. It’s an art object. I went to art school and I was trained to make objects, so it was very important to me.” That love of records is so grand that he took a risk, spent the extra money on the bells and whistles—including fifteen lock-groove loop tracks—and wrote his love letter on a hand-crafted double-vinyl edition of the album engineered with Anne-Marie Suenram of Suenram Productions in San Pablo, California, the only woman-owned and operated cutting and mastering company of its kind in North America.

Locking into the groove ::

Cutting the vinyl with its special features was a true labor of love. “It was indeed a major learning experience that challenged me to apply everything I’d learned,” Suenram says via email, “but with Ben‘s encouragement I was able to figure out what I needed to do. Ben‘s record was, and still is, the only record I’ve done with this kind of cut,” she says.

Ben Stokes and Anne-Marie Suenram engineering the lacquer cut for the vinyl edition of Concept Record. Taken from Stokes’ Instagram page.

“I wanted to try to do all the kind of physical, fun things that you can do only with vinyl,” Stokes continues, “like lock-grooves, beat matching and putting things at 133.33 beats per minute, which if you look at those tracks that are at that tempo, the grooves on the physical record actually kind of line up in an interesting visual way. And um, little side note, the inner disk labels, if you set your phone to 30 frames a second [and record a video] you get some semblance of a little animation there.”

Honing in specifically on the logistics of creating a record with so many lock-groove tracks, Stokes brought along a favorite record from his collection called 500 Lock-Grooves By 500 Artists as a template. “Anywhere you drop the needle, it locks. [Suenram] looked at that record under a microscope and she was like, ‘I’m not sure how they did this, and we can’t do it quite this way with my machinery,'” Stokes explains. “The workaround was to create sort of like an entry ramp onto a freeway,” he says, “so there’s a little silence before each lock groove, and then it locks. It circles in on itself. And you really can’t test it, so you don’t really know if it’s going to work until you get your test pressings and at that point, I was like, well, I’m not going back.”

Signature Ben Stokes kind of stuff ::

Lucky for him, as well as for us, it worked very well and serves as another feature of the record’s concept, which is mixing the two records with each other—or with other records—on turntables. Stokes has done DJ sets with the album already, using his 500 Lock-Grooves record alongside Concept Record, and says they worked perfectly together. “Every lock groove on any record will match up with any lock groove on any other record, if you’re playing at the same speed.” He encourages musicians and DJs to post their own mixes to Instagram. “I would love to see what people do,” he says excitedly.

All of these nifty features would be mere window dressing without solid DHS music at the core. “I didn’t want it to overshadow that it’s also a new DHS record,” says Stokes. “Part of it came about because I stumbled into a really funny sample, and it’s basically like [a celebrity] interviewing himself, and he’s talking about his album, and he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s just a great album. I mean, it’s what they call a concept record.’ So, that kind of sent me in that trajectory… led me down a rabbit hole. After that initial, like, kind of inspiration, then I just threw in every sample that I have of people talking about records. It’s got some acid house tracks and some minimal electronic-y stuff. I don’t know, signature Ben Stokes kind of stuff.”

A good portion of Concept Record is dedicated to the acid music style DHS is known for. From dropping the “Green Acid” and subsequently being treated in the “Hospital Tent,” to the reminder of “I Can Feel It,” blooping along with “Supersonic Holofonic,” then flashing back with “Cut To Black” and “Full Blackout,” the whole middle section plays like one big, aural, acid-trip. “Yeah, there is kind of like a little storyline there,” admits Stokes.

When asked what draws him to the style, he replies, “It was seminal. I went to school in Chicago in 1986, and the whole house thing was just teetering into acid. I don’t even think the term acid in 1986 was prevalent. But I was schooled on that stuff through WBMX radio in Chicago where, literally, I mean, the entire city would be listening to the same station. You’d hear it coming out of cars. On your front stoop, you’d hear it, one car going by with the Doppler effect, and you’d hear another one on the same station come in the other direction. I mean, it was just such a magical time. I was so young and that music was just totally new and unlike anything else that I had ever heard. I already loved electronic stuff, but this was just like, wow, these endless mixes of pretty much anonymous stuff WBMX would play for 4 hours on Friday and Saturday night. So that was just a really formative time for me. Definitely a really cool time, I think, for music.”

Redefining The Concept Record ::

Now 40 years removed from those halcyon college days, the imagery Stokes has created for Concept Record‘s gatefold cover is decidedly 2026. While the content of many of the pictures may evoke the 1950s and 1960s in style, the artificial intelligence used to create them, as well as the music video for the album’s title track, “Concept Record,” is apparent. “I actually hate AI,” Stokes says. “If I had found some film about a company that made a shiny silver record and everyone was analyzing it, I’m sure I would have used that.” He underscores that working in the industry he’s in, often being called in by companies as an art director for audio/visual projects, “You gotta keep up with the new tools. I spent a year just learning how to use some of the AI tools.” For Stokes it’s a reflection of this moment in time, yet he still tried to approach it from a familiar standpoint. “In a lot of ways, these images for the cover and for that video were very much like creating stock footage from possibly old educational films or something like that. I just created them in a very different way,” he says. “But it felt kind of familiar territory for me because I was thinking of it like stock footage.”

Don’t expect AI creation to be the new norm for Stokes though. “You mentioned the ‘Supersonic [Holofonic]’ video,” he says, which I indeed had. “Well, that’s all found-footage. That’s very DHS.” He continues, “I’m sure that I will use [AI] again for work things, but when it comes to DHS stuff I think I’m going old school for everything going forward. It was an interesting detour and I feel like that’s something that, as an artist, I do often,” he says. “I did that video, I did this album cover, and then I canceled all my subscriptions. I’m going back to my roots. I like going outside with my camera and shooting stuff or doing stop motion animation. And I think that people are kind of probably craving a little bit more rough-around-the-edges analog look, you know?” Stokes stresses as to the musical content, “I did put a very big disclaimer on the inside that no audio was created using AI.”

The Art of the Tease ::

With Concept Record being Ben Stokes‘ ode to the vinyl record, it almost begs the question as to what he’s been spinning lately. “I’ve been really getting into 45s,” he says. “I go up to my mom’s cabin in northern Minnesota and there’s like this thrift store called Rick’s Relics in Tower, Minnesota, and they just have this phenomenal collection of records. Just boxes and boxes and piles that, you know, they’re all out of their sleeves. It’s like 25 cents for a 7-inch. And I’ve been picking up all kinds, like The Trashmen, a Minneapolis band from the 60s. They’re, like, garage surf sort of style. I love a lot of that shit.” In continuing to answer the same question, Stokes pivots to Meat Beat Manifesto. “I absolutely love everything Jack [Dangers] does. I think it’s just incredible.” He admits to a little name dropping on his album. “I had to name-call Meat Beat Manifesto by naming a song, “Meat Beat Manifesto Soundcheck.” That was us at a show, doing soundcheck for a show.”

Casually in the conversation Stokes drops a bombshell: “There is going to be a Meat Beat Manifesto tour early next year.” Cue the sound of a needle scratching across a record. “We’re booked to do a couple shows in Europe, and then there’s going to be some dates here [in the U.S.]. And, um, more info to come! And at some point, Jack and I are going to do probably a [Man From] Mantis album. Sometime in the, uh, indefinite future,” he teases. Does this mean new Meat Beat material is around the corner? “Yeah, well, Jack‘s always, always got new stuff coming out,” is the response.

What of a DHS live tour supporting Concept Record though? “Well, I would love to,” says Stokes. “I’m trying to figure out a stealthy version that I can fit in the trunk of my car and like, you know, do at least a small mini tour. LA, I think, is pretty conceivable. And of course, when we do shows locally here in San Francisco, I get the absolute pleasure of having Jack performing with me as DHS.” You might guess what Stokes offers next: “I’m just going to have to keep you posted on that.”

Perhaps Ben Stokes just came up with his next concept: The Art of the Tease. If so, it’s coming along nicely.

Concept Record is available on Bandcamp.