When Ben Bartlett isn’t bunkered in his low-rent basement bedroom hacking a virtual thrift-store of electronics, he’s cleaning windows to make a living. It’s your average workaday job; one which sees the 28-year-old forced to stare daily through the glass of the oft-opulent lives of the residents of the overinflated rental empire of Auckland, New Zealand. At the end of the day, he retires to his suburban lab, draped in woolen blankets and collapsing into his own private empire of synths and drum machines, becoming his alt-alter ego, Vanguard One.
It’s an inspiring, if not dichotomous life for Bartlett; one moment he’s polishing the outsides of estates, the next, he’s diving into the monastic dystopia of the artist – one that’s rife with self-imposed poverty, insecurities, and a grand middle finger to the outside world.
His debut album ‘Run Away’ is a love letter to escapism; therapy at the hands of machines. ‘Undone’, the second single off the album weaves his harsh internal monologue with radio blips, deconstructed drum beats, and the haunting whispers of the voices inside his head.
The visual for the song was made in collaboration with Beach Brains brainchild Gareth Hemmings. Hemmings subjected Bartlett to a literal bed of video games in a dank garage, soaking him in a bath of milk, with a narrative aptly mirroring the theme of escapism with runs rife through his past. This attempt at being vulnerable to a wider audience is his attempt at giving people solidarity and by hopefully bringing each of our own escapist tendencies to the surface so we can take a look at them and then all run away together.
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