Ben Frost Grabs Listeners By The Throat

The music of Ben Frost is about contrast; influenced as much by Classical Minimalism as by Punk Rock and Metal, Frost's throbbing guitar-based textures emerge from nothing and slowly coalesce into huge, forbidding forms that often eschew conventional structures in favor of the inevitable unfoldings of vast mechanical systems.

On albums like Steel Wound, released on the Room40 label in 2003 and Theory of Machines on Bedroom Community in 2007 Frost’s music is more than a cerebral exercise and has an undeniable visceral presence, felt as much as heard. His compositions are created with an acute awareness of the listener and their comfort thresholds, exploiting every extreme of pitch and volume.

His notorious, building-shaking performances at international festivals including Montreal’s famed MUTEK combine amplified electronics with the furious thrashing of live guitars. His music’s intense physicality has filled gallery spaces and driven contemporary dance productions by Chunky Move, the Icelandic Dance Company, and choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir.

The massive scale of Frost’s music often projects a sense of remoteness and isolation and yet he remains in demand as an artistic collaborator, having performed and worked with/for artists as diverse and acclaimed as Björk, Stars Like Fleas, Tim Hecker, Amiina, Christian Fennesz, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Reykjavík! and Bora Yoon, and with celebrated Bedroom Community labelmates Sam Amidon (Appalachian folksinger), Nico Muhly (classical composer), and longtime collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson (electronic composer/producer) with whom Frost shares Sigurssson’s recording facility Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavík. A cinematic sensibility also pervades his much anticipated forthcoming LP, By The Throat, whose darkly surreal sound-world owes as much to David Lynch as it does to David Lang.

What was your modus operandi with By The Throat - as in what did you set out to achieve and how did you set about achieving it?
My approach to music is far too intuitive to truly conceptualize it beyond very rudimentary ideas. I found myself gravitating back to the piano and a more orchestral palette after the intense guitar orientation of Theory of Machines, which is to say I saw colours and textures in those instruments that I was drawn to - hot reds and deep blacks, glowing yellows. I had to search for them outside of theory's clinical whites and blues. It’s all just a process of attraction, and elimination, removing dead weight.

What relationship does it have with Theory Of Machines from your perspective
The lighting is very different. Theory of machines was all fluorescent strip lighting and surgical white, this record is more like the glow from a lava flow, or a burning church.

You seem to like provoking physical reactions with your music, or at least take people away from their comfort zones: why?
It is pure self indulgence- physical music is something that I respond to in a profoundly emotional way. An audience is not really part of that equation beyond attempting to present my work in the way I most want to experience it personally.

You've personally described your work as inherently aggressive and dark - what do you think attracts you to music like this and makes you want to make it...?
That is THE question I have explored more than any other and the simple answer is I don’t honestly know. There are people and experiences that I could point to as influential. However they are all elements of an overall attraction to a certain aesthetic in art, visual, aural or otherwise that is, like you say, inherently dark. Is my work aggressive because I listened too much to Metallica as a kid or did I listen to too much Metallica as a kid because I am inherently aggressive? Ultimately exploring that question is a flailing extrapolation of meaning from a penchant for salty foods, fast cars, or difficult women. I am just programmed that way.

A lot of the sounds on your last album were processed in pre-production: was this the case here?
What I was getting at when I said that is that the element of live performance is really at the crux of Theory. You cannot dial up "visceral" with a plugin, you can’t fake it... you can try, with all manner of distortion or what have you but ultimately you will fail. It has to be physical - that is largely why I was so attracted to the Swans during the making of Theory Of Machines, even just performing with an acoustic guitar Michael Gira conjures that same brute force. Theory was performed to my production values. It’s a physical process indistinguishable from a technical process and what I was trying to highlight was essentially that Theory sounded like that going to tape. It’s only really evident just how "live" it is when it’s performed on tour, which, by no coincidence, is actually very easy to do and I enjoy it a lot.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same of this record, because the instrumentation used in this record was really out of my hands quite a bit. I wrote it, but most of it was performed by other musicians. Having said that there is a very minimal amount of "processing" going on here also. I am simply not interested in FX. If there is a technical arsenal to be discussed regarding this record I would say it’s a graphic EQ and a pair of B+K mics, it’s really bare bones production. This is an acoustic record.

There are recordings of jungle creatures (lions, tigers) and whales on the record. The force of a fierce animal growl obviously awakens something primordial and fearful in us - was this the ultimate sound, something that even intensely processed guitars couldn't quite match?
Sonically, as with most things, truth is stranger and more captivating than fiction. There is just more honesty and more power in the tone produced by the snarl of a lion than by the same tone performed on a bass synth. I am not setting rules to make an "animal record", these things just make sense to me, I am not trying to be eccentric. I am inspired far more a by a beautiful recording of a breathing Snow Leopard than by a new max patch. If anything, By The Throat is me expressing, explicitly, my need to hear things that scare me and shallow my breathing- I want flesh in my music, it has to bleed to mean something to me. It’s just not enough to make the notes fit together for me anymore. If that is obvious, then so be it.

The darkness and intensity is balanced by relatively insouciant elements such as acoustic guitar or strings. Is this contrast present to alleviate the intensity or to serve as a contrast and make it stronger?
My approach to music is a product of a visually oriented practice. My approach to art is rooted in painting and as a result I work visually with music. Abstract painting is simply an abstraction of the natural state of an image - you cant start with abstraction, it has to come from something otherwise it has no substance and musically I see no difference. Everything I do always begins in the roots of musical realism and tonality. The strung, plucked elements that you are referring to began simply as melodies which evolved to instruments which eventually evolved into these densely layered characters; vehicles for a narrative. They are accumulated mass, definitive shapes with an inexorable musical trajectory but their exact shape is indefinable. I think my favourite thing about this record is these unique instruments that drive it, mutated hybrid piano/harpsichord/dulcimer-esque shapes.

As has been noted in the press release / liner notes, there's a cinematic quality to this album. Was this intentional - as in did you consider the compositions from a filmic perspective while they were being made?
The liner notes are once again written by our label friend, a musicologist called Daniel Johnson. The thing about Danny is he has a remarkable ability to contextualize my work (and that of everything on Bedroom Community). It is most certainly opinionated but it remains open to interpretation, it’s not dogmatic which I really appreciate. I was amused by the "cinematic" slant of his view on the record, as I did not hear it that way. However, the more I have thought about it, as with his writing on Theory Of Machines I quickly began to hear it the way he heard it. His writing almost allows me to hear my own music objectively, which is very interesting to me.

You’ve used a few musicians on the record – string quartet amiina, Nico Muhly, Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara, Swedish metal outfit Crowpath –  but Borgar Magnasson’s  double bass work seems particularly prevalent…
Borgar Magnason is an animal. He breathes like a Lion. It is actually impossible to record him without getting his breathing all over it. Myself and Daníel Ágúst were discussing this recently, that neither of us are in possession of a single Borgar Magnason recording that doesn’t have his breathing all over it. I am going to start working on his solo record over the winter and I have already put the idea out there that we should put a mic on his nose because that texture is really as much an element of his unique sound as the bow on the strings. The elements of my music are rooted in the same elements that define the attributes of most carnivorous species: brute force and instinct and an inherent natural aggression - the same could be said for most of my collaborators, particularly Borgar. A rare animal indeed.

Pics by Bjarni Gríms, courtesy of Bedroom Community.