Ever hear a record that reminds you of another artist, only different on enough levels to keep things from sounding truly derivative? Here’s one…
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Tag: Ben Frost
The Artist/Album: Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason, SÓLARIS (Bedroom Community, 2011)
The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: The eerie, deeply emotive subtleties of this alternate reality soundtrack—cut for the cult favorite Solaris—passed right through us when we first saw it performed at Unsound‘s New York festival. Not because Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason can’t string a composition together. (They’re actually two of Iceland’s strongest rising stars.) No, the problem was Brian Eno’s visuals, which fell surprisingly flat despite his efforts to turn Andrei Tarkovsky’s stunning sci-fi film into “another strange loop of computer-generated distortion.”
Taken on its own, SÓLARIS is one of the year’s most sinister song suites, a startling miasma of prepared piano, cutting chords and strings that seem to be strangling your speakers ever so slowly. And when all those taut terror tactics suddenly segues into pure silence near the end, it’s as if you just watched something truly awful happen and the clouds parted at a moment that can only be described as “too late.”
Photo: Bjarni Grims
Words by Andrew Parks
When I interviewed Michael Gira for a Decibel story last year, the Swans frontman asked if I’d ever heard of someone named Ben Frost. The mood manipulator was apparently a prime candidate for some remixes, so I proceeded to tell him how perfect the pairing would be and that he really should see Frost play sometime. After all, the last time I witnessed one of his profoundly visceral sets, the raw power of it all literally left my teeth rattling. Kinda like a solo, instrumental Swans show, really.
Gira found it hard to believe that someone could be that intense with nothing but a guitar and a laptop, but he eventually tapped the multi-instrumentalist for Swans’ Brooklyn stop, so something must have worked out. Or as Lustmord—the godfather of dark ambient music—told us when asked about his own computerized performances last week, “I wouldn’t pay to see someone in front of a laptop. But seeing Kraftwerk do it [well] made me think, ‘Well, I guess you can do something cool if you have really good sound.’”
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If you haven’t pre-ordered Brian Eno‘s rather excellent Small Craft On a Milk Sea record yet, the legendary producer/performer has teased us with yet another track: the post-Music For Airports piece “Emerald and Stone,” which is way more spare and subtle than the other songs he’s streamed so far (“2 Forms of Anger,” “Horse”).
Check it out after the jump, and be sure to watch our daily site this week, as we’ll be running a special Eno guide by one of his Small Craft collaborators, composer/multi-instrumentalist Jon Hopkins.
In semi-related news, we ran into Ben Frost after he opened for Swans a few weekends ago, and the ambient/noise architect said he’s already started his mentorship program with Eno. While the pair have no plans for an actual release—yet—Frost said they’ll be developing ideas in England and Iceland over the coming year. We’ll have more details about this dream collaboration soon. Frost will also be appearing on Tim Hecker’s next Kranky album in 2011…
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Bret Easton Ellis
[Photo by Olaf Heine]
We sift the ‘net for today’s top stories so you don’t have to…
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[Photo by Sanchez]
Instead of going on and on about our top picks of 2009 and the past 10 years—we’ll do that next week—self-titled asked some of our favorite ‘09 artists to share their favorite records. This particular post is brought to you by Tim Hecker and a lingering Long Player of the Day entry, Ben Frost…
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The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: We met Ben Frost rather randomly last year—at Iceland’s Airwaves Festival—and were immediately captivated by his crushing take on neo-classical compositions and dark-ambient soundscapes. The producer/multi-instrumentalist was piecing this LP together at the time, and now that it’s finally out, we can hear exactly what took so damn long. A headphone/hi-fi listen that threatens to engulf your very being, Frost’s third proper full-length is a picturesque portrayal of fever dreams and waking nightmares, set to disembodied beats, ominous orchestras, and heavy dollops of distortion. And while there’s a two-part piece inspired by Ghostbusters character Peter Venkman, it’s clear that Frost is hinting at the dark side of Bill Murray’s psyche, not anything involving proton packs or Slimer. A beautifully-damaged bit of brilliance from start to finish.
David Cross
We sift the ‘net for today’s top stories so you don’t have to…
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Photos by Andrew Parks
When we heard that Ben Frost—easily one of our favorite ‘experimental’ acts at the moment, since he knows how to push things forward without losing the listener in a masturbatory haze—and Bora Yoon were presenting a special Church of the Ascension performance this week, self-titled sprinted to see the pair pull a Sunn O))) and “evoke site specific spirits.” And by that we mean the freaked-out feeling we had after a hymnal book from 1982 fell on our lap midway through their hour-long ( (( Phonation )) ) set. Apparently someone up there was a little miffed about tonight’s secular soundtrack of ghastly loops, clinical, chest-thumping beats and speakers pushed to the point of purified distortion. Us, well we dug everything but one ill-advised turn into singer/songwriter territory. Yoon’s voice is so gorgeous in the abstract that we prefer her wailing like a tormented soprano over standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus narratives.
Lots of photos after the jump. If you like what you see, be sure to see Yoon’s Frost-free gig at the Stone on December 5. (It will have “special visitors,” though.)
