If there is one band who know what can happen when geopolitics eclipses the music, it’s Oi Va Voi. After two of their gigs were cancelled last year following campaigns by anti-Israel activists, the British band were left feeling that the music industry had become an unwelcoming and hostile place for Jews. So, they launched a record label – a home where Jewish artists, and artists of all backgrounds, would be welcome.
Parallel Skies Records has now released the debut EP (standing for Extended Play: longer than a single, shorter than an album) by its first artist signing, the alt R&B singer and pianist Benji Miller.
“Benji came across our radar and his energy just leapt out of the speakers and the screen,” Oi Va Voi founder and drummer Josh Breslaw says. “Getting to know him, and sitting and listening to him play the piano and sing all of his ideas, his potential was so clear. He can achieve anything in music.”
The EP, Love or Pain, is a remarkable debut, blending laid-back R&B with layered harmonies and acoustic guitar.
Music runs in this 22-year-old’s blood. For a start, his great uncle is the composer Joseph Horovitz, known for his humorous Horrortorio pastiche and the “pop cantata” Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, while his father, Malcolm Miller, is a classical pianist and musicologist (who has written an academic tome on Beethoven’s piano music).
Miller is classically trained, having piano lessons with his dad since his first year at Naima Jewish Preparatory School in London’s Maida Vale, learning clarinet to Grade 7, and winning a music scholarship to UCS, where he started singing opera at the age of 12.
“I was very much on that path,” he says, adding, “But I didn’t really like classical music.”
Miller preferred singing along to Frank Sinatra than to Pavarotti, and you can hear that jazz influence in his own songs. Having escaped his classical roots, he “rediscovered the magic of the piano” at 15, when he learnt to play all the chords, and realised he could write his own music.
He now has written more than 100 songs, some of which he performed at his earliest gigs, playing alongside his father and brother at Jewish nursing homes. He then took a gap year in Israel, during which he did a music technology internship in Tel Aviv and worked for an ambulance service in Jerusalem, before he returned to the UK to take a degree in economics at Bristol University.
Aside from the fact that he hated economics, he recalls often being pulled into debates on Israel-Palestine while at Bristol.
This and the rise in antisemitism led him to take a UJS Leadership Fellowship course.
“It’s important to discuss [antisemitism], also I feel a lot of my university friends don’t really know any Jewish people, so it’s important to be a good example,” he says.
Miller cites his influences as Dominic Fike and Tyler, the Creator for their expansive R’n’B production, and the raw, conversational vocals and “vibes” of Mac Miller, which he injects into his jazz-inflected pop and indie melodies. “It creates quite a cool blend,” he says.
Take the second single, Hey Darcey, a gently uplifting track that features his lyrical honesty and melodic instinct as it describes witnessing a loved one lose their sense of identity amid struggles with depression.
“It’s about helping someone who’s very close to you,” Miller says. “People always say that you should speak to yourself how you would speak to someone you love, or how you would a close friend.
“As if you’re trying to get yourself out of a rut or a bad mental place, and back to that really positive, youthful, happy place that you were once in.”
Miller knows about a mental challenge. As his degree in economics was coming to an end, things could not have looked brighter, but seven months ago he was diagnosed with a rare brain condition which, as he puts it in his own Instagram video, “flipped his life like a switch”.
“Out of nowhere I saw the positive, energetic, dare I say charismatic – I saw that person become this anxious social recluse who I see in the mirror today,” he says. “The only time I’d ever go out the house is to get my Deliveroo order.”
His rollercoaster journey is captured in his powerful, introspective track Let Me In, with its lyrics, “I love the pain and I love the sorrow/ Will I ever get to see tomorrow/ Beautiful things that light up the sky / How I wish I could step into another life/ I’ve got a ticking time bomb in my head / I’ve got to make the most of my time left/ Treasure the sunsets, the smell of the rain/ Holding onto each other again and again.”
It feels the polar opposite to his light and breezy song Swimming in the Ocean.
“Let Me In kind of comes out of nowhere, because the whole point of the EP is love or pain,” says Miller.
“I was diagnosed with this crazy rare brain condition, and then I was in surgery pretty quickly.
“We did the first half of the EP, and then I had brain radiosurgery, which was mad, then we did the second half, so it was very much a part of making the EP.”
He says he is still at risk for the next few years. “So, I’m learning to live with that, which is quite tough. It’s a low risk, but it’s still there, and also for the last seven months I couldn’t exercise, I was having a lot of headaches... It’s been a mad change.”
He calls it “learning to live an imperfect life… That’s what I want [this EP] to be about – to show that it can happen to anyone anywhere at any time and you just have to live in the moment.”
As such, the music has been a distraction at a frightening time and a way to live in the moment.
“It’s helped for sure. It’s given me a purpose. I also somehow managed to graduate, but it would have felt so purposeless not doing anything if I was just sitting at home all day and not really giving anything to the world. But if I’m working on my music I’m doing something – that’s very important, mentally.”
Recently, Miller had his first taste of fame when he was approached by a fan who had recognised him from his Instagram videos. He grins.
“I want a lot of people to listen to my music, and I want my music to help a lot of people. I want to make songwriting and performing my living.”
How does he feel about being on a record label that was built to offer a safe place for Jewish artists?
“For me, Parallel Skies’ ethos puts the music first, making sure artists are judged by the quality and meaning of their work, which in today’s climate is increasingly important,” he says thoughtfully.
“That thinking of course creates a safer space and also much more meaningful music.”
“Benji is Jewish, but that isn’t yet a visible part of his music, and that’s exactly the point,” says Breslaw.
“Parallel Skies isn’t about defining artists by their identity, it’s about giving talented people the space and support to grow into the fullest version of themselves, at a time when the UK music scene has its own prevailing narratives that leave many Jewish artists feeling on the outside. Benji is exactly the kind of artist this label was built for, and he’s just the beginning.”
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