Minute Taker

Ben McGarvey (born 22 December 1981), known under the stage name Minute Taker, is an English recording artist.

He has released three albums: Too Busy Framing (2008), Last Things (2013) and Wolf Hours (2022) along with several EPs, including Reconstruction (2017), and a series of albums available exclusively through a subscription plan named Secret Songs.

McGarvey grew up in the Shropshire countryside.

His interest in music began at the age of 12 when he started playing a piano in the basement of his family home.

After having some music lessons, he preferred playing by ear and began writing his own songs.

He has described how songwriting helped him to come to terms with his sexuality as a young teenager.

He told DNA Magazine in 2021 how he always loved 1980s music: "When I was a teenager in the '90s I was particularly uncool because the '80s were so unfashionable at that point. When I was 16 and went to college I got into a lot of alternative singer-songwriters like Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Björk and PJ Harvey. I pretty much taught myself how to play piano by sitting down and working out their songs".

After college he went on to study contemporary music at university.

Following his university studies, McGarvey moved to Manchester where he wrote and recorded songs in his bedroom.

In February 2008, he self-financed his debut album Too Busy Framing (released under his own name).

Clash described the album as "carefully constructed, layered compositions with as much in common with Múm as David Gray and his ilk".

Manchester Evening News described McGarvey's songs as being "full of strange, hypnotic loops and samples, and the lonesome, existential imagery of his lyrics brings to mind a young Morrissey".

McGarvey has described how he sampled gay porn movies for the song "Lust": "creating the song's rhythm section from sounds created during intercourse".

Another of the album's songs "Disjointed" refers to serial killers Fred and Rose West.

The story is based on the experiences of Ravi Thornton's younger brother Roabbi (aka Rob) who committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 31 after having suffered a long battle with schizophrenia.

McGarvey created the music live on stage using a loop pedal, piano and vocal harmonies to accompany the actors who sang the lead parts.

In 2010 McGarvey formed a band namedThe Spiels (an abbreviation of "glockenspiels" ) with singer-songwriter Ryan Lamey.

The pair originally met when Lamey recruited some of McGarvey's backing band members for his own solo project.

They later came to work together when Lamey replied to an advert McGarvey placed on Gumtree looking for musical collaborators and the project evolved into a 5 piece band ). Manchester Evening News described their music as "alternative folk-pop of infinitely dark hue" comparing their work to that of Arcade Fire, Kate Bush and Antony and the Johnsons.

In 2012 McGarvey adopted the psydonymn of Minute Taker and released the EP Postlude.

In reference to his change of artist name, McGarvey revealed in an interview with The 405 that "I never really felt comfortable using my own name".

He described how he'd spent time working in offices as a Minute Taker and was drawn to the name because it simultaneously sounded "mundane and fantastical".

In 2013, The 405 retrospectively praised Too Busy Framing stating that "As far as debut albums go, it remains an underrated hidden gem and continues to age rather well."

The Spiels released their debut EP Nightvision Part 1 in January 2013.

On 15 April 2013, McGarvey released his second solo album Last Things.

He provided interviews for several publications, including Notion, Attitude, Gay Times and The 405.

The latter featured two videos of McGarvey's performing "Somewhere Under Water" (from Last Things) and a cover version of Pet Shop Boys' "Heart" using piano, voice and various electronic instruments including a synthesizer and a loop pedal.

Last Things received favourable reviews.

As part of a feature on Minute Taker, Notion described Last Things as "A beautiful collection of electronic-orientated pop songs that sound like old recordings that have been rediscovered and restored by a renegade computer; glitching and looping."

Three promotional singles from the album were released: "Merge", "Let It Go" and "Alkali".

In February 2014, the 405 premiered Minute Taker's first music video for "Alkali", which incorporates clips from the 1922 expressionist film Nosferatu interwoven with degraded self-portrait footage and silent film-era narrational captions.

"Skeleton Dance" (the b-side to "Alkali") has been played by Tom Robinson on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Robinson also played "Merge" as part of a Kate Bush special show, citing McGarvey as a new artist who has been influenced by Bush's music.

McGarvey composed the music for a stage musical Hoax: My Lonely Heart, which was shown at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre in June 2014.

Written by Ravi Thornton, HOAX is a cross-media project consisting of the stage musical HOAX My Lonely Heart and accompanying graphic novel HOAX Psychosis Blues.

The musical, directed by Benji Reid, was described on the Royal Exchange Theatre's website as "a dark musical fuelled by those most destructive of tendencies: love and self-sabotage".

McGarvey premiered audio-visual show To Love Somebody Melancholy at Chorlton Arts Festival in May 2015.

A collaboration with illustrator/animator Ana Stefaniak, the show was described by the Chorlton Arts Festival website as "a story told through a contemporary song cycle and projected photographic animations, exploring the melancholic temperament of artists".

Minute Taker toured the North of England with the show in Spring 2017 culminating at The Lowry, Salford.

In 2018, the HOAX project was nominated for a National Lottery Good Causes Award.