Ben Westbeech

Born: 12 May 1981 in Hertfordshire, England, UK.

Bristol-based Westbeech spans the styles of hip-hop, soulful house, and drum'n'bass – the latter under alias Lean. As a classically trained cellist, pianist, and vocalist, he was raised on his dad's rock & roll, though was turned onto beat and bass-driven music in the late 1980's, with influences ranging from N.W.A. to LTJ Bukem. At age 12 he bought turntables and started collecting and mixing music, playing in orchestras and choirs by day, and mixing dance music by night.

After two years of university music and drama courses, Westbeech opted for work experience with drum'n'bass artists Shy FX and T-Power, going on to produce tracks for MC Sirplus and his own tracks. His track "So Good Today" (2006) was the first single on Gilles Peterson's label Brownswood Recordings, followed by the album "Welcome To The Best Years Of Your Life" (2007).

He worked with Jazzanova on tracks "I Can See" (2008) and "Upside Down 1" (2011), and did production work for other artists. After a couple of years, he moved into a more house music sound, with a couple of singles on Italian label Brownswood Recordings and US label Brownswood Recordings "Something For The Weekend" (2011) and "Falling" (2011), along with album "There's More To Life Than This" (2011).

Taking a break, he then did a collaboration with US artist Christian Taylor (aka Kon) under artist project [a=The Vision (16)] featuring vocalist Andreya Triana on popular UK house music label Brownswood Recordings, releasing album "The Vision" (2020), along with four singles "Heaven (2019), "Missing" (2020), "Mountains" (2020), and "Down" (2021).