Dub FX: The One Man Band With His Third Eye Open

From the streets of Melbourne to festival main stages, Benjamin Stanford broadcasts intention over algorithm.

By Johnny Papan

Published on June 9, 2025

Picture this: You’re walking down the street on a typical summer day. Maybe you’re shopping, meeting a friend for coffee, or getting home from work. As you journey on, you see a single man with nothing but an amp, a microphone and a bunch of FX pedals laid out in front of him. He clicks each pedal with his foot as instrumental loops emerge from the amplifier. Drum beats, guitars, vocal samples, all creating a mesmerizing piece of music. Suddenly, as he starts beatboxing, rapping, and singing, you are among a crowd of several hundred people who stumbled upon this sight the same way you did.

This unique experience is curated by Australian man Benjamin Stanford, professionally known as Dub FX. Stanford started his career as a street performer and grew into a club-packing, festival-headlining act mixing dub, reggae, hip-hop and electronic music. This eclectic mix and his status as a one-man-show draw people in from all over the world, but the connectivity he feels with his audience keeps them watching.

“There’s a lot of telepathy in performance,” he says from his music studio in Lisbon, Portugal. A black and white psychedelic spread covers one of his back walls, displaying tripped-out arms, eyeballs, tentacles and more waving and melting into each other. “I imagine I’m throwing out a net, and I’m reeling people in. I intentionally create a kind of Wi-Fi, a web that engulfs everybody. The more I lean into it, the stronger reaction I get. When you put out a certain energy, it shapes reality. You become who you imagine yourself to be.”

This sense of energetic transmission wasn’t always part of his worldview. Stanford recalls a time a kinesiologist told him he was telepathic. He was only 15 years old at the time and brushed it off. After seeing the world, experiencing an endless cosmos of human energy and experimenting with psychedelic medicines, which played a role in his personal development, things started to change. Now his performances seem to feel less like gigs and more like rituals.

Stanford begins each show with something he calls an “Amen Break,” a call to the universe for infinite consciousness, which he can channel and use to project love, energy and positivity towards his audience. On days where he felt depleted, his Reiki healer aunt advised him to simply “ask for more.” This changed everything.

His ability to energetically connect with his audience has remained constant through his career, but he channels it differently depending on the performance. From the unpredictability of performing on the streets, to the focused energy of a club, to the spectacle of a festival stage, each space requires a slightly different approach.

“If it’s a small show, I make it feel epic. If it’s an epic show, I try to make it feel intimate,” he says. “On the street, my mission was to sell as many CDs as possible; that was my way of touching people. Whenever I had sunglasses on, no one would stop. When I took them off and sang with my eyes shut, people would stop. There’s something magnetic about that. In a club, my mission was to make people dance. That chill hip-hop tune you smoke at home doesn’t bang in the club. At a festival, no one expects one man to create this huge epic sound. I’d come out after a big band, alone, and people would be mesmerized.”

Stanford’s live performances aren’t the only thing that contributed to his success. In 2008, a raw, one-take video of his street performance of “Love Someone,” where he beatboxed and layered harmonies using a loop station, went viral. At one point it was the number one most-liked video in the world on YouTube, where it currently has more than 31 million views. It was notably featured on the front page of Reddit and shared by Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, which further led to him performing at major festivals like Glastonbury, SXSW, and Coachella.

The viral success also attracted attention from major brands like Coca-Cola, Red Bull, and Nestlé, as well as an invitation to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Stanf ord turned them all down.

“To me, the definition of selling out is not necessarily changing your genre of music. You’re a sellout if you start promoting a brand that you don’t believe in,” he says. “If you start promoting a brand that you don’t actively use, or wouldn’t use, that to me is the definition of selling out. I don’t consume those energy drinks. I don’t watch Ellen DeGeneres and that kind of vacuous TV. I think it rots humanity.”

Blowing up on social media wasn’t something that Stanford was in control of, or really trying to do. He doesn’t seem to care much for social media – especially with what it has become now. He explains that social media has become a necessary evil for an artist, something they have to do to get gigs.

“Social media is a strange one. We all have to engage with it,” he says. “If I don’t, I won’t get booked, you know what I mean? Promoters want to see that you’ve got numbers on your social media because that’s how they now promote their gigs. All I care about is writing and making good music. I just put it out in my way. Now we’re at the mercy of Mark ‘Fuckerberg’ and all the algorithms. I’ve got 700 thousand followers on Facebook and I can’t even really reach them. I don’t try to use the algorithms. I don’t try to game the system. I won’t fall into that.”

It’s clear that Stanford is focused on a purpose that transcends likes and algorithms. While social platforms may control his visibility, the message within his music is timeless, rooted in a desire to elevate consciousness. Whether he’s performing to a handful of strangers on the street or 20 thousand people, his intention remains the same.

“To me, the main message in all of my music always comes back to one specific theme, and that is self-empowerment,” he concludes. “I truly believe that self-empowerment is the key to unlocking humanity’s highest potential. If everybody is empowered within themselves, they will always make the best decisions for themselves and for the community.”

Dub FX will perform on June 20 at the Victoria Ska & Reggae Festival, and on June 21 in Vancouver, BC at the Rickshaw Theatre

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