Bethurum

At age five, one minute of piano earned Benjamin Bethurum one minute of video gaming ? and so was honed his button-pushing dexterity. Spared from a coding vocation by his second album (Versa Vice), which caught Microsoft's attention, Bethurum began his career as a sound designer and spent three years creating audio strategies (and beeps, blips and clicks) for the The Man. Today he lends his two ears and ten digits to the international mobile-hardware company HTC (creators of the Google phone).

Senior Sound Designer by day (depending on the time zone), he scores marketing campaigns, creates sonic brands and makes ringtones that chime on millions of devices worldwide. Enjoy them in symphony the next time you leave a show or land at an airport. Nights find him in a home-studio ? surrounded by vintage James Bond vinyl, Vonnegut novels and an antique radio ? creating soundscapes for full-size speakers. A private background in music theory, and the left-brain of an engineer let Bethurum compose, manipulate and master organic elements that he stacks into songs like card castles of sound. Counterbalancing cinematic swells and endearing melodies with gritty beats and obese bass lines, Bethurum's music is a portal to the peaks and valleys of his inspiration: love, youth and momentum. As compelled to create as most of us are to eat, his exponential output is squared by his most recent release, DOSSIER.