“Epic, otherworldly sounds in an intimate show, with digital trickery framing trad folk singer-songwritery fare." - The Guardian

"McGarvey is a young singer/songwriter with that rarest of things in the genre; imagination." - Clash

"An undiscovered hidden gem" - The 405

"His latest album Last Things is 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." - Planet Notion ​

"McGarvey has locked himself away in his bedroom and crafted songs of true otherworldly magic and splendour. Bursting with beautiful acoustic melodies and hooks." Manchester Evening News


Minute Taker is the new pseudonym of Manchester-based alternative songwriter/producer Ben McGarvey. In 2008 Ben released his debut album Too Busy Framing to critical acclaim. Primarily recorded in his parents’ basement using an old piano, a PC and various gadgets, the resulting album was described by Manchester Evening News as “bursting with beautiful acoustic melodies and hooks”, and was recently declared "an underrated hidden gem " by The 405.

Minute Taker adopts a more expansive, electronic-orientated approach that could be described as dark dream pop with elements of glitch, industrial and lo-fi, drawing comparisons to James Blake, Bat For Lashes, Grimes, Björk and Thom Yorke.
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New Album "Last Things"

Last Things, the album, will be released on 15th April 2013. Songs such as Merge, Alkali and Echo 2 (which has been regularly featured on Manchester’s BBC Introducing) are loaded with distorted beats, sweeping synthesisers and dense vocal layering. Conversely, on other tracks, live instruments occupy the foreground with stark piano and string arrangements - such as Tin Box and Somewhere Under Water which garnered a short-listing for Mojo Magazine’s 2011 New Voice Award. The clear threads that run throughout are the emotive melody lines and existential themes. Layers of floating vocal choirs, glockenspiel inflections and found-sounds form an ambient and often otherworldly back-drop.

Other Projects

Over the last few years Ben has produced material for other Manchester-based artists (We Are Willow, Kathryn Edwards, Butler Williams), composed soundtracks for several short-films (Owens Productions' Copain series) and is currently writing the music for a very dark musical theatre production written by graphic novelist Ravi Thornton. Ben also writes and performs with folktronic outfit The Spiels, which he formed in 2010 with Canadian singer-songwriter Ryan Lamey. Now a 5 piece band The Spiels released their debut EP Nightvision Part 1 in February 2013.
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Minute Taker's new album Last Things will be released on 15th April 2013. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.