Benny Boeldt is an electronic musician associated with Baltimore's Wham City collective, along with Dan Deacon and Future Islands. Constantly reinventing his sound from album to album, his music has ranged from chiptunes to wistful synth pop anthems to frantic IDM, but it's always maintained a focus on bright, expressive melodies and playfulness. Originally from Durham, North Carolina, Boeldt attended East Carolina University in Greenville, attending art classes with some of his friends who would eventually form Future Islands. Along with that band, Boeldt moved to Baltimore in 2007 and began creating music under the name Adventure, performing shows with fellow Wham City regulars such as Dan Deacon, OCDJ, and Videohippos. He signed with Baltimore's Carpark Records, also home to several Wham City-related acts, and Adventure's self-titled debut album appeared in 2008. The all-instrumental album featured chiming melodies reminiscent of 8-bit and 16-bit video games, but with a pop sensibility. The following year, Adventure and Dan Deacon released a split EP, and Boeldt contributed vocals to Deacon's ambitious masterwork Bromst. Boeldt also toured as part of Deacon's ensemble in support of the album, in addition to performing solo concerts of his Adventure material. In 2011, Adventure released Lesser Known, an album of starry-eyed synth pop anthems featuring Boeldt's own singing. He toured with labelmate Toro y Moi in support of the album. Adventure's third album, 2013's Weird Work, was yet another stylistic shift, losing the vocals and embracing complex, stuttering IDM beats similar to early-2000s recordings on Tigerbeat6 or Warp. Boeldt decided to release his next album, 2016's 8 of Cups, under his own name rather than Adventure. The brief album was a hyper-concentrated blast of colorful melodies, jittery beats, and chopped-up samples sourced from VHS tapes. ~ Paul Simpson