BEN FROST & DANíEL BJARNASON
Sólaris
HVALUR12
Bedroom Community 2011
11 Tracks. 46mins08secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Bedroom Community’s long serving prince of noir Ben Frost and recent roster addition Daníel Bjarnason have joined forces for a project which takes them beyond their respective sound. Originally created for the 2010 edition of Unsound Festival, and based on Polish writer Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris and its 1972 loose adaptation by Andrei Tarkovky, this work combines powerful orchestral sequences and discreet electronic textures into a haunting and intimate soundtrack.

Recorded with Sinfonietta Cracovia, the creative process went through a series of stages, from original live improvisations by Bjarnason and Frost to the final score, written from data collected as these improvisations were fed into a computer and irremediably altered. This radical process is ultimately eclipsed by the very nature of the music resulting from it; deeply introspective, nuanced and emotionally charged, Sólaris is a magnificent piece of modern classical music. The pair steer clear from intentionally sweeping themes and favour instead a permanent state of decay where melodies are suggested rather than imposed, and often appear fragmented and crisscrossed with interferences and distortions. This rampant wasting process is particularly vivid in the second part of the record, especially on Unbreakable Silence, where the strings appear caught in a permanent state of shiver, and on the rarefied soundscapes of You Mean More To Me Than Any Scientific Truth and Saccades.

Frost’s contribution is totally unlike the post-industrial abstraction of Theory Of Machines or By The Throat, echoing Bjarnasson’s extremely detailed and understated arrangements. Here, his presence is felt more through atmospheric touches than in concrete terms, whether it is textural soundscapes upon which the orchestra builds up, like the distant chilling wind heard on Cruel Miracles, or occasional fragments of corroded electronics on Hydrogen Sulfide or You Mean More…, yet there is a feeling of utter desolation sipping through the whole record which is close to that felt on By The Throat.

Sólaris is a subtle and sombre response to Lem’s dystopian tale, but while its mood is undeniably subdued and reflective, Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason transcend their respective sonic realm to create a particularly haunting and moving soundtrack which doesn’t require the support of the film it was composed for to exist as a piece of work in its own right.

4.3/5

Ben Frost | Daníel Bjarnason | Bedroom Community
Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Bedroom Community, the label founded by Valgeir Sigurđsson, has, for over four years, been a hub of intense collaborative work between the various members of the collective. They regularly work on each others’ records, in various capacities, and often join effort on stage. In the last year, the four embarked on an ambitious tour which has seen them perform across Europe. Originally scheduled for last April, the Barbican performance of Bedroom Community’s Whale Watching Tour was postponed after that Icelandic volcano started erupting, causing chaos in European air traffic. On a prematurely autumnal late September evening, the Bedroom Community caravan finally stopped at London’s Barbican Centre for one of the very last dates with all four members of the collective, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurđsson, accompanied by four additional musicians, Una Sveinbjarardóttir (violin), Nadia Sirota (viola), Brogar Magnason (contrabass) and Helgi Jonson (trombone and vocals) playing in this particular format.

Picked from the four’s respective catalogues, pretty much in equal parts, with no apparent theme or order, the evening demonstrated if needed how intricately linked their work is. While some at times walked off stage when their presence was not required, there was, throughout the evening, a constant exchange of ideas, realised, right from the opening piece, Frost’s Theory Of Machines, taken from the album of the same title, which had the entire ensemble working up a dense soundscape, first from cascading piano and acoustic guitar, progressively beautifully interwoven with crackles and electronics, and at last with heavy stabs of electric guitar as the piece grew bolder. But, as to shake off the dark overtones of this opening piece, Muhly then offered the light, airy and extremely hectic Skiptown, for which he appeared to stretch himself over the entire keyboard of his piano, often playing syncopated lines in the lowest and highest registers at the same time. Later on, inviting Una Sveinbjarardóttir to take centre stage, he offered a beautiful and delicate version of Honest Music, an old piece as he put it himself, which featured on his debut record, Speaks Volume. Muhly’s reading of Keep In Touch later, with Nadia Sirota leading on viola, proved particularly intense, its many fragmented themes crashing into one another, revolving upon themselves to emerge elsewhere transformed, splattered with fragments of Antony Hegarty (unfortunately not present). The piece, which was written over eight years ago and was the coda to Speaks Volume, was getting its long overdue London premiere, as the ever vocal Muhly informed the audience.

With his delicate, yet occasionally corrosive, folk songs salvaged from the traditional American songbook and given a contemporary feel, Sam Amidon is an artist like no other. His wonderful smoky voice manages to evoke both innocence and wisdom, and can at once be soft, silky, harsh and surprisingly powerful. His rendition of songs primarily taken from his two albums for the label, especially I See The Sigh, Pretty Fair Damsel or How About That Blood, in all their fragile appearance, were given much more strength with discreet electronics and instrumentation in the background. It is however his contribution to Muhly’s intense and grandiose The Only Tune, a piece which the pair have been performing live together for some time, and which appears to grow more ambitious, disjointed and abstract as time goes on, which proved once again the centre piece of the evening. The piece, based on a dark folk song which Muhly’s parents used to sing to him as a child, is a roller coster of extremely dense and angular moments, during which Amidon appears at times pushed and shoved by a tempestuous tide or rushing instruments and noises, and much more pastoral sections, allowing, at times, for the song to rise and develop for a moment, often before being once again torn to shred by the rest of the ensemble. In all its complexities,  intricacies and dark theme, The Only Tune is a supremely confident playful piece which truly becomes alive when performed on stage.

Icelandic singer and trombonist Helgi Jonson was invited to take on lead vocals for two of Sigurđsson’s tracks. His take on Baby Architect and Kin stepped away from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s clean vocal interpretation on the original versions and offered instead a much rawer rendering, a times made all the more intense by approximative tuning. The latter especially carried much dramatic effects and pathos, building on Sigurđsson extremely complex and intricate electronic constructions.

Sigurđsson’s recent work for the soundtrack of Icelandic documentary Draumalandið, especially the stunning Past Tundra, also got a good mention during the evening. The orchestral nature of the work was balanced by Sigurđsson’s and Frost’s live electronics, adding a strong element of grit to the overall sound. Grit is an essential part of Frost’s work, and the few tracks that were performed on the evening, taken from his superb By The Throat album, threw a cloak of darkness and icy cold over Barbican Hall. While his music can be extremely delicate and melodic, it often takes very little to bring down distortions, statics and noise, and it very much was the case during the performance. The haunting wolf howlings that chilled the air a number of times through By The Throat were reproduced, with limited success, by Brogar Magnason on the contrabass, but this took away none of Frost’s impressive sound formations.

All throughout the evening, the chemistry between the four was palpable, made clear not so much by big demonstrations as by discreet glances and affectionate gestures during instrument swap on stage. Muhly, thanks to his natural ability at speaking openly in public, appeared to take on the role of master of ceremony. His often light-hearted and casual approach often helps take the edge of much more serious events, yet here, it proved equally as appropriate, offering the music for what it is, and what the Bedroom Community quartet had clearly come over for, something to be enjoyed thoroughly and without restrictions.

Bedroom Community

The noughties have seen probably the most radical changes in the music industries since the advent of the record. Consumption habits have dramatically moved from traditional to digital formats, music has been increasingly seen as something to steal rather than to buy, and listening habits means that nowadays, the album is becoming increasingly redundant. Or is it? Whereas it had, at least in some circles, become totally acceptable to fill records with substandard music, it is now essential for artists to create consistent pieces of work if they want to retain the attention of their audience. The last ten years have delivered their fair share of hits and misses, and this list doesn’t pretend to be in any way shape or form exhaustive. This is just, in no particular order, the definitive list of the 20 albums that have defined the noughties at themilkfactory.

JOANNA NEWSOM
Ys
DC303CD
Drag City 2006
05 Tracks. 55mins41secs
.

An album like no other, by an artist like no other. Containing just five songs, some developed over fifteen minutes, Ys, named after a small mythical city on the coast of Brittany, France, is the second album by American folk singer and harp player Joanna Newsom. Van Dyke Parks wraps lush orchestrations around Joanna Newsom’s weird and wonderful tales to give her poetic lyrics additional relief and accentuate the emotional nature of her compositions.

Read review

MURCOF
Martes
BAY23CD
The Leaf Label 2002
09 Tracks. 51mins55secs
.
.

Sampling contemporary classical works and assembling them into stark electronic pieces, propelled by micro beats and glitches, Mexican artist Fernando Corona, recording under the name Murcof, created one of the most compelling and evocative electronic debuts of the decade.

Read review

BROADCAST
Tender Buttons
WARPCD136
Warp Records 2005
14 Tracks. 40mins32secs
.
.

By the time they released their third album, Broadcast had simmer down to just Trish Keenan and James Cargill, and had shed most of the rich and ornate forms of previous records to only retain the gritty electronic core of their music.

Read review

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Merriweather Post Pavilion
WIGCD216
Domino Recording Co. 2009
11 Tracks. 54mins42secs
.
.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is a far cry from the primal tribal sound of Animal Collective’s early records, yet it is also a testament of how the band have retained the essence of their sound while continuously evolving into more song-based forms.

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PORTISHEAD
Third
1764013
Island Records 2008
11 Tracks. 50mins06secs
.
.

It took over ten years for Portishead to release the follow up to their eponymous second album, but Third proved worth the wait. Gone was the trip-hop of the mid-nineties, replaced with healthy doses of Krautrock, but at the heart of it still lies ‘that voice’.

Read review

ARVE HENRIKSEN
Cartography
ECM2086
ECM Records 2008
12 Tracks. 51mins11secs
.
.

After three genre-defining albums for Rune Grammofon, Arve Henriksen’s Cartography, released on ECM, showed a more mature approach. Working with the cream of Scandinavian jazz, Henriksen created with this fourth album a truly masterful work.

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BIOSPHERE
Dropsonde
TO66LP
Touch 2005
06 Tracks. 37mins52secs
.
.

After a series of increasingly isolationist ambient records, Biosphere’s Geir Jenssen took a different path with his eighth album, incorporating jazz rhythms and richer, warmer soundscapes into his sumptuous ambient compositions.

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CLARK
Body Riddle
WARPCD149
Warp Records 2006
11 Tracks. 42mins21secs
.
.

Clark has established himself as the most consistent of Warp’s electronic artists of the decade with a string of excellent electronic records. Gritty, raw and angular, Body Riddle, his third album, defined Clark’s sound more than any other.

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AUTECHRE
Quaristice / Quaristice (Versions)
WARPCD333X0
Warp Records 2008
11 Tracks. 67mins49secs
.
.

Seventeen years on from their first release, Autechre continue to redefine their sound record after record. Quaristice, with shorter, snappier tracks, showed a return to more accessible musical forms, while its sister album, Quaristice (Versions), offered totally different versions of some of the same tracks.

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BURIAL
Untrue
HDBC002
Hyperdub Records 2007
10 Tracks. 50mins28secs
.

A strong progression from the clinical dubstep of Burial’s debut, Untrue introduced haunting voices and swirling melodies, wrapped around razor sharp beats.

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TWINE
Twine
GI18
Ghostly International 2003
09 Tracks. 63mins32secs
.

Twine’s fourth album constituted the pinnacle of the duo’s electro-acoustic work. Processing acoustic and electric instruments and incorporating them in their complex electronic constructions, occasionally adding vocal samples, they created a truly compelling record.

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BENOÎT PIOULARD
Précis
KRANK098
Kranky 2006
14 Tracks. 36mins52secs
.
.

Combining delicate acoustic song forms and electronics, American musician Thomas Meluch, recording as Benoît Pioulard, produced a stunning record, filled with poetic touches and intelligent pop music.

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THE BLACK DOG WITH BLACK SIFICHI
Unsavoury Products
PUPLP3
Hydrogen Dukebox 2002
20 Tracks. 65mins26secs
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.

Prior to The Black Dog becoming a trio again, Ken Downie recorded this record with Scottish poet Black Sifichi, who can be heard throughout the album placing his odd surrealist tales over Downie’s impeccably classy electronica.

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MAX RICHTER
The Blue Notebooks
CD1304
130701/Fat-Cat Records 2004
11 Tracks. 40mins36secs
.
.

One of the brightest talents on the new classical scene, composer and pianist Max Richter created a truly evocative piece of work with his second album, mixing delicate piano pieces, compositions for string quartets, discreet electronics and found sounds.

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THE VILLAGE ORCHESTRA
Et In Arcadia Ego
HPLL014
Highpoint Lowlife 2005
09 Tracks. 57mins00secs
.

The first album by Marcia Blaine School For Girls member Ruaridh Law was released five years ago on the excellent Highpoint Lowlife, deploying inspired atmospheric soundscapes and complex beat structures over just under an hour.

Read review

310
Recessional
BAY33CD
The Leaf Label 2003
15 Tracks. 54mins37secs
.
.

Combining elements of hip-hop, jazz, electronica and folk has been at the core of 310’s work for over a decade now, but on their fifth album, their third for Leaf, the duo formed of Joseph Dierker and Tim Donovan gave their sound a more accessible twist while losing none of its original intricacy.

Read review

VARIOUS PRODUCTION
The World Is Gone
XLCD204
XL Recordings 2006
12 Tracks. 46mins52secs
.
.

Operating under a rather anonymous name, British duo Various Production conjured the contradictory forces of urban dubstep and pastoral folk into one fascinating record, served by a plethora of vocal contributors.

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COLLEEN ET LES BOITES A MUSIQUE
Colleen Et Les Boîtes A Musique
BAY53CD
The Leaf Label 2006
14 Tracks. 38mins55secs
.

French artist has released three magnificent records in the last decade, yet it is this mini album, originally commissioned by French public service radio station France Culture, composed entirely on music boxes and processed on computer later on, that has proved the most enduring, evocative and poetic of the lot.

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SUPERSILENT
6
RCD2029
Rune Grammofon 2003
06 Tracks. 57mins51secs
.

The sixth album by Norwegian super group Supersilent showed yet another dimension to the quartet’s incredibly vast repertoire by investigating the slightly more subtle ambient side of their improvisation work.

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BEN FROST
Theory Of Machines
HVALUR2
Bedroom Community 2006
05 Tracks. 38mins40secs
.
.

Australian musician Ben Frost’s first album for Bedroom Community was like a series of shockwaves delivered in the space of forty minutes and five tracks. A deeply haunting and often threatening record, it continues to make a considerable mark.

Read review

Twelve months compiled into just twenty albums. From the thousands of records released each year, it is difficult to get even a handful on the site, and even more difficult to decide which ones were the best of the lot. This is however the twenty albums that have marked 2009 for themilkfactory.

1.

VLADISLAV DELAY
Tummaa
The Leaf Label

2.

BEN FROST
By The Throat
Bedroom Community

3.

STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS & ANGEL
Strings Of Consciousness & Angel
Important Records

4.

PETER BRODERICK & MACHINEFABRIEK
Blank Grey Canvas Sky
Fang Bomb

5.

MORITZ VON OSWALD TRIO
Vertical Ascent
Honest Jon’s Records

6.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Merriweather Post Pavillion
Domino Recording Co.

7.

KING MIDAS SOUND
Waiting For You
Hyperdub

8.

SYMBIOSIS ORCHESTRA
Live Journeys
Baskaru

9.

MOUNTAINS
Choral
Thrill Jockey

10.

TYONDAI BRAXTON
Central Market
Warp Records

11.

BROADCAST & THE FOCUS GROUP
Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
Warp Records

12.

ALVA NOTO & RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
utp_
Raster Noton

13.

PETER BROODERICK
Music For Falling From Trees
Erased Tapes

14.

THE VILLAGE ORCHESTRA
I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again
Highpoint Lowlife

15.

TELEFON TEL AVIV
Immolate Yourself
BPitch Control

16.

SIMON SCOTT
Navigare
Miasmah Recordings

17.

ÓLAFUR ARNALDS
Found Songs
Erased Tapes

18.

SND
Atavism
Raster-Noton

19.

OBERMAN KNOCKS
13th Smallest
Aperture Records

20.

RIVAL CONSOLES
IO
Erased Tapes

Let us know what you think of this list, and what are your records of 2009.

In the space of just a handful of records, Australian-born musician Ben Frost has defined a very particular sound, which blends in elements of modern classical, metal and electronica into haunting cinematic soundscapes. Although his first album proper was published on Room40 in 2003, it is with his debut contribution for Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community, Theory Of Machines (2006) that he began to receive the attention he deserves. With his latest opus, By The Throat, Frost has developed a much more organic sound, which he developed with a number of collaborators, including Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Swedish hardcore metal band Crowpath, Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara and Icelandic string quartet Amiina. Ben took a few minutes out of his current tour with the Bedroom Community guys to talk to themilkfactory about his many influences, how he got acquainted with Bedroom Community, how he faced the weaknesses in his work and addressed them, and how things are not just black and white.

Ben, it’s been two years since you released Theory Of Machines. What have you been up to?
Touring, scoring dance pieces, trying to sleep on planes…

How did you come to music, and who influenced you in your formative years?
I studied piano from the time I was like seven or eight years old and then studied music theory all through school. But my first real connection with a particular kind of music outside of the classical realm was probably with Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, Ice T’s Bodycount, and also my parents listened to a lot of Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac… A sizeable portion of my initial exposure to music happened in the mid eighties- when Tears For fears ruled the world (pun intended), later on I guess I found Nirvana, The Birthday Party, The Dirty Three, the Smashing Pumpkins, Trent Reznor, and then I suppose through those bands I found a lot of material I missed because I was too young to appreciate it at the time- specifically The Cure, Joy Division, Swans, Big Black, Coil… I don’t know really, I could go on forever…  then, I mean, the first truly electronic music I remember taking an interest in was Autechre’s Amber LP and Mick Harris’s Scorn recordings, long after I had started playing in bands, I had never really heard anything like that before.

Your first album, released as Frost, was entirely guitar-based and very ambient. How did you work on that album, and do you think you will ever return to something so bare?
Even at that point in time I knew myself well enough to know that in order to make a record that simple I needed to restrict it with both time, influence, space and instrumentation. I packed my car with a couple of guitars and amps and rented a small house in the middle of nowhere, with no net, no phone, not even a radio. I had to come home with a finished record. It was really that simple. I made the rules and then obeyed them. If I wanted to I could do it again, no doubt. In fact Lawrence (English) and I have talked about it at length just this last month. I just need to decide what exactly it is I want to do and where I want to do it and then just set the time aside.

You’re part of Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community crew, which seems to be a very close-knit family, with Nico Muhly and Sam Amidon. You all work on each other’s records and you are also currently touring together as part of Bedroom Community’s Whale Watching Tour. How did you get involved with these guys?
Valgeir and I met in Melbourne, Australia in 2003, we got along immediately. I needed to leave Australia, I liked Iceland, Valgeir wanted to start a label, with myself and Nico… All of these ideas just aligned in the right way. I moved to Iceland in 2005 and the rest is history really. We know what we want, what we like and we do it exactly like that. It’s a very simple setup really, no compromises, no nonsense.

Your first album for Bedroom Community, Theory Of Machines, was a pretty complex and dark affair, where guitars still appeared, but very often in treated form, and the inspiration seem to be pretty far reaching, from electronica to metal and to noise and drones. Was working on the album a very different process to what you’d done before?
Leading up to that record my music was just getting better I think, becoming more concerned with form, and overall shape rather than influences. I was studying with Darrin Verhagen and Phillip Samartzis who were both, in their own ways very hard on me, and made me face the weaknesses in my work and address them, which I owe a lot too particularly in regards to Theory Of Machines. I was searching for something that was more immediate and dangerous. At that time, that sort of 2000-2004 period, Melbourne had become engulfed in this fender twin, reverberated post Mogwai shoegaze thing that I, along with everyone else was drowning in. I walked into a record store one day around 2003-04 I guess, which at that time was owned by Oren Ambarchi and I recall mentioning how I had found my way back to the Swans, Big Black and a lot of metal because for me that was kind of an antithesis to everything around me then, but how also I was actually fascinated by some of these nu-metal records, the texture of them; so hi-fi, so clinical and so brutally cold. It was fascinating to me; Slipknot, Korn, The Deftones… I couldn’t put my finger on what I meant exactly, I mean, the music itself was mostly irrelevant, but I remember at one point I said, “what is there that sounds like this, but works like this” and I held up two records: (The Deftones’) White Pony, and Arvo Pärt ‘s Tabula Rasa. He couldn’t name anything, and in a very crude and simplified way, I knew there and then there was a record that needed to be made that could feed on that space

It was quite a difficult record, which was extremely well received. Were you surprised by the reception it got?
Yes, no, I don’t know really. By the time Theory Of Machines was out there I was already well versed in bad reviews, or more often than not having my records completely ignored by the press. If a journalist said my work was rubbish I didn’t pay attention to that, so it is only logical that I apply the same logic to positive press too. There is no room for diplomacy in art, or at least not in mine: making music for other people is design. Ultimately I’m only interested in being satisfied with it for myself, I am not a Designer.

By The Throat, your new album, is possibly even darker than Theory Of Machines, but it is also very different. How did you approach it? Did you have a clear idea of where you wanted to go with this one, and is the finish product close to your original idea of it?
It’s interesting to me that the description of music in print often comes down to basic visual metaphors like light and dark when what is really being described is the emotional hue, or “colour” of a record. We need a better lexicon for the description of music I think. I always knew the colours would be different, it had to be warmer and have more distance than Theory, and a luminescent glow to it where Theory Of Machines was unashamedly stark and clinically defined. But I also knew it would be a “nocturnal” record too. From day one this record evoked a fiery, burning glow set against ink black.

For this album, you’ve worked once again with Valgeir Sigurðsson, Sam Amidon and Nico Muhly, who has done some orchestral arrangements, as well as Swedish hardcore metal band Crowpath, Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara and Amiina, an all-female Icelandic string quartet. How do you manage to bring all these together into something coherent?
It’s not about crossing lines, it’s moreover that I just don’t see any lines to draw. I guess this irrational juxtaposition of images is a kind of surrealism. The dramatic and narrative spaces that explode between these disparate shapes are ultimately more exciting to me that presenting some kind of distorted image of an existing reality. By The Throat is not an abstract reflection on an existing space, I want to create new realities, ones that I needed to hear.

Are these representative of what you usually listen to?
Right now I am listening a lot to Chris Watson, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Third Symphony and the Cure’s Seventeen Seconds. I would suggest that they are more representative of this record than anything else.

You use howling wolves a couple of times on the album, which gives these particular tracks a very chilling twist, and wolves are also pictured on the album cover. What is the idea behind using wolves so much on this record?
I am fascinated by the natural world. In music though there is very little in the space between Chris Watson and new age whale song relaxation music. Aside from anything else I thought it would be a challenge to create a record that drew from the natural world in its raw beauty but stopped short of making a parody of it in the way that aforementioned new age music does. This is a vocal record, a physical record, and Wolf song is the original choir.

On your site, there is a message to those who have downloaded the album through file sharing to who you say “I woke this morning with the depressing thought that because many people are now listening to By The Throat through internet theft (congratulations).You are – as a direct result – not enjoying the visual aspect of this record, which is as important to me as the aural one.” You then go on to provide a link to download some of the pictures, taken by Bjarni Gríms, used in the booklet, which seems a bit contradictory. Is it more important to you that people experience the whole work than they experience it legally?
Unfortunately yes.

Some of these pictures are pretty impressive, and they reflect part of the record to a certain extend, although perhaps softening its atmospheric nature quite a bit. Did you want the visual aspect of the record to reflect its tone, and do you think they convey that particular idea?
It’s not enough for the visual aspect to just convey something… anything… I need the images to be in direct dialogue with the music. The roots of those images were inextricably linked to the making of the record. Having said that, I don’t want to be didactic- I want to present ideas, but I don’t want to tell you how to feel about them, how you contruct a narrative, if at all is not in my control.

Do you listen to a lot of music while you’re away touring? What’s going to be on your iPod or in your CD wallet?
I don’t have much of a finger on the pulse of contemporary music, but I’m lucky to have friends whose lust for new music supplies me with things I should hear. I just got an album by this band, Mount Eerie… there is some interesting stuff going on there. But for the most part, if I am going to listen to music, it will usually be the same four or five records.

What are the five most important records/films/books or work of art to you?
I could never live somewhere that didn’t have The Cure’s Disintegration, some images from Bill Henson’s Lux Et Nox series or a copy of Groundhog Day.

Email interview November 2009

Ben Frost | Ben Frost (MySpace) | Bedroom Community

BEN FROST
By The Throat
HVALUR6
Bedroom Community 2009
11 Tracks. 45mins53secs

It is really a case of Frost by name, Frost(y) by nature when it comes to Australian-born musician Ben Frost. Currently living in Reykjavik, Iceland, Frost has been spilling his chilling blend of decaying electronica and processed electric guitars since 2001 and has released music on Room40, Dreamland Recordings and Architecture. In 2006, he joined the ranks of Valgeir Sigurðsson’s excellent Bedroom Community and released his third album, Theory Of Machines, an icy collection of battered metal heavily processed through razor-sharp electronics and field recordings.

Three years on, By The Throat throws this broken world on its head and plunges into a dense, dark and threatening network of subterranean galleries, almost permanently subjected to destructive quakes. Even more so than on Theory Of Machines, Frost expertly manipulates moods on this album, moving from menace to fear, tension to oppression, with great dexterity, building dense layers of sounds to serve his narrative threads. Right from the opening moments of Killshot, with its heavy slabs of abrasive processed guitars, distortions and deafening bass, Frost sets the tone. Below the decomposing top layers though is a strangely ethereal little melody which appears totally unexpectedly and becomes for a short moment the focus of the piece. Things take a much darker and more chilling turn with The Carpathians. Echoing the album cover, which depicts two wolves caught in headlights, a human figure hunched behind them, distorted wolf howls are brushed over the growing hum of an orchestral drone to create a disturbingly oppressive and cold sound piece. On Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes, Frost applies even more pressure, but instead of doing so in obvious fashion, he uses anticipation and frustration to feed the tension. The piece starts gently enough, with a circling melody played on the piano and echoes of an acoustic guitar being plucked, occupying the space for a while, with ominous string work woven into the piece later on. It all threatens to break apart at any moment to let a torrent of noise and distortion in, but it never happens. Instead, Frost teases the mind to build anxiety, and then freezes the mood with the sound of howling wolves, brought much closer to the surface, again.

This tension build-up is found on other piece here, but it often leads to some kind of release. This is particularly the case on Hibakúsja, which goes from a brass and guitar opening sequence into much denser clusters of noises and distortions, paced by the erratic breathing of a human being gasping for air. Emerging out of this chaos are the soothing sounds of a cello and a violin, bringing some kind of normality back for an instant. Strings are at the heart of Peter Venkman Pt. 1, arranged in angular shapes, augmented with what sounds like a ghostly choir, that are somewhere between electro-acoustic and musique concrète abstraction. On the second part, a gentler guitar motif slowly rises amongst the musical debris and appears to progressively guide the instruments back onto a more peaceful path. The last three pieces work together, as their main environment, built from arid and sterile noises and processed sounds, gets constantly redefined, at times pushing into pure noise, at other bringing back some musical elements, but never settling for long on any particular shore.

For this record, Ben Frost has brought a number of collaborators on board, including composer Nico Muhly, Swedish metal band Crowpath, Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara and all-female Icelandic string quartet Amiina, each bringing their particular universe, from which Frost feeds freely to construct his own paranoid world. Over the year, he has been pushing increasingly towards these murky grounds, finding his way where others would lose themselves forever. If Theory Of Machines was the sound of engineering gone wrong, By The Throat is that of nature shutting down, bringing all life forms down in its fall.

5/5

Ben Frost | Ben Frost (MySpace) | Bedroom Community
Amazon UK: CD | LP Amazon US: CD | LP

VALGEIR SIGURĐSSON
Eqvílibríum
HVALUR3CD/LP
Bedroom Community 2007
10 Tracks. 49mins10secs

Icelandic musician and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson is best known as a regular collaborator with Björk, having contributed to all her records since Selmasongs, and for recent stints with the likes of Bonnie Prince Billy (The Letting Go) and CocoRosie (The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn). He recently set up his own imprint, Bedroom Community, and has published Speaks Volume, the debut album from twenty-four year old American classical composer Nico Muhly and the most recent output from Melbourne’s Ben Frost.

Eqvílibríum, Sigurðsson’s long overdue debut album is an elegant collection of gentle acoustic pieces tainted with orchestral swathes and discreet electronics textures. If the compositions could appear deceptively simple at first, repeat listens reveal complex and intricate formations which explode in colourful ribbons of sounds, textures and emotions to form the backbone of Sigurðsson’s exquisite miniature tales.

Nico Muhly handles the score here and appears in various capacities (piano, synths, celesta, string arrangements), leading an impressive cast, amongst which Guy Sigsworth, another regular Björk contributor, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Faun Fables’ Dawn McCarthy, Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis and Machine Translations’ J. Walker are some of the most high-profile intervenients. Sigurðsson makes good use of this constant afflux of energy. He, who is more often found in the background, guides this exotic ensemble through the meanderings of his imagination.

Although the majority of the compositions collected here are instrumental, vocals occasional materialise and bring an element of human tension into this wonderfully detailed and dense patchwork. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy lends his softly droned torments to Evolution Of Waters and Kin, pushing the two songs into moody corners. Evolution Of Waters especially sounds like a precious stone set against a lush string-laden backdrop of shimmering sub-melodies. There are echoes of Mark Kozelek on Baby Architect as J. Walker weaves surrealist lyrics into Sigurðsson’s wonderful atmospheric pop while Dawn McCarthy brings earthy flavours and emotional grounding to the dramatic Winter Sleep.

As a counterpoint to the rich and vibrant layers of opening track A Symmetry and Focal Points, After Four and even more so Equilibrium Is Restored offer beautiful autumnal textures and melancholic overtones. The latter track is not without recalling some of the ambiences of Ben Frost’s superb Theory Of Machines. The two remaining instrumentals allow for some of the most poignant arrangements and cinematic moments of the record. At just one minute forty, Before Nine serves as an impeccable introduction to the heart-warming Kin, while the intricate shimmering piano and guitar motifs of Lungs, For Merrilee bring this album to a truly inspiring finale.

Despite the many collaborators involved and the ambitious aspect of the project, Eqvílibríum is beautifully understated and subtle and above all deeply poetic. Valgeir Sigurðsson is the most welcoming and thoughtful of hosts and, as he leads his companions through various narratives, he orchestrates one of the most exhilarating and perfect records you’ll hear this year.

Explore: Valgeir Sigurðsson | Bedroom Community
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BEN FROST
Theory Of Machines
HVALUR2
Bedroom Community 2006
05 Tracks. 38mins40secs

There is something terribly disturbing about the cover of Ben Frost’s latest offering. Showing him hanging upside down, feet and hands wrapped in green plastic bags and tied together. Additional images of him lying on the floor looking half dead or of his head caught up in a strange metallic contraption further accentuate the feeling of unease that surrounds this release. While a definite stylistic slant, these images are more than just a simple visual translation of the content of the album.

Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, twenty-six year old Frost relocated to the somewhat cooler Reykjavik in 2005 and teamed up with Björk collaborator and Bedroom Community label head Valgeir Sigurðsson. Prior to depositing his bags of noise on the Bedroom Community doorstep, Frost has been spotted on labels such as Room40 and John Chantler’s Inventing Zero. He has also been involved with various art installations and has worked on scores for films and dance companies. More recently, he has worked under the collective moniker of School Of Emotional Engineering and released a self-titled album, published on Architecture, in 2004.

The scope of Theory Of Machines, Frost’s first offering for Bedroom Community, is rather vast, ranging from gritty guitar-fuelled cloudy drones to digital minimalism and greasy heavy rock. This album challenges and unsettles by its apparent inertia and the underlying perversion which results from the sometimes violent atmospheric shifts throughout. Nothing is quite what it seems here. Compositions that appear calm and introvert can erupt into raucous clouds or dense seismic formations unexpectedly only to be pulverized into minute particles. Elsewhere, Frost applies layer after layer of thick sonic foundation to form cyclical pieces.

The album opens with the title track, which grows from an ethereal guitar line into a much grittier and sturdier edifice. We Love You Michael Gira works in similar ways, but the result is more subtle and delicate, despite the mind-drilling ring of an alarm clock pacing amongst abrasive glitches for a while. Stomp is a much more complex composition. Raising razor-sharp electric fences around pulsating electronic debris, Frost builds tension and gets under the skin of its audience, while Coda is a much rawer piece, with electric sparks flying across all the way through. The last track, Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water is, in contrast, totally introvert and almost pastoral as Frost progressively applies an orchestral feel into his processed soundscapes.

Ben Frost’s music is not exactly pretty in the esthetic meaning of the word, but the treatment he applies give his compositions an interesting sheen. While the reaches of this album are, as its title indicates, somewhat mechanical and industrial, there is an organic thread which runs through each track, binding Theory Of Machines together beautifully.

Ben Frost | Bedroom Community
Buy: CD