1. -order this album in our web-shop
   

 

1. -read the reviews below
   

1. -press tools
   

- download free desktops here

Ben Frost represents one of today’s new breed of composers who conjures an aural broth that inhabits an amorphous cross-section of genres. It's impossible to truly classify where he is coming from musically

and to simply label him an experimental electronic musician brings no justice whatsoever. His recent performance at Sonar was heralded by Resident Advisor as being "awe inspiring...the most visceral show of the  festival".

The music 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.

Three years from the release of his acclaimed Theory of Machines, Frost has returned with his second full-length for Bedroom Community, BY THE THROAT. Where Theory of Machines came sterilized in fluorescent light, BY THE THROAT is blood red and cloaked in shadow. Produced in Iceland by Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurðsson, BY THE THROAT also features performances by Amiina,

The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metal outfit Crowpath and

composer Nico Muhly.

REVIEWS / PRESS

From Pitchfork

Ben Frost
By the Throat

[Bedroom Community; 2009]

8.4

Maybe it's By the Throat, the savagery-suggesting name of the fifth LP by Australia-born, Iceland-based producer Ben Frost, that gives the album its menacing reputation. Perhaps it's the three wolves stalking its cover, the threatening title appropriately scrawled above in a slanted, action-film font. Or it could simply be the music, which doles out new anxieties with each turn: The harsh noise and dissonant strings lashing above and around the beat of "Peter Venkman Pt. I". Or, on "Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes", where howling wolves surround and overtake the rustle of a gentle chamber ensemble. Wolves again harmonize against the screech of a violin on "The Carpathians". From aggressive visage to animal vocals, By the Throat is, as another reviewer said, "dread-inducing music."

No equivocation necessary, By the Throat is a sinister album, full of moments that rattle cores with sound (play it loud) and sound effects (beware those wolves). But Frost's work is more than a hall of terrors: These vivid instrumentals, which seem menacing at first, also feel somehow triumphant when heard again-- new details becoming more crucial. By the Throat might frighten on the first listen, and it might shock by the 12th. But, somewhere in between, Frost-- both a compelling new musical dramaturge and arranger-- might just show you the silver lining of all these fears.

Blending musique concrète samples with exorbitant electronic production and the guest work of string quartet Amiina and composer Nico Muhly, Frost pulls ideas from sources far and wide-- his instrumental work bears traces of radio rock, heavy metal, rap. The closing triptych moves between metal, dark-wave, hip-hop, and harsh-noise influences, cycling them all through a bustle-and-collapse template that has as much to do with Aphex Twin as it does experimental composer Anton Webern. So, if "Through the Glass of the Roof" first sounds like a busted jungle track, it sounds more like black metal deliverance by the time "Through the Roof of Your Mouth" begins. That midsection, in turn, suggests Cluster, Radiohead, and Merzbow. And when it collapses into a sheet of harsh noise, Frost restores the bassline for the finale, "Through the Mouth of Your Eye". He isolates the bass, slows it down and eventually lets it drift away under cover of a few shrieking string parts, again deflecting the question of what matters most.

Nowhere is the push and pull between muted triumph and tempered menace more apparent than on "Peter Venkman Pts. I and II", named for Bill Murray's Ghostbusters character. During "Pt. I", a chorus of horns and voices rise and fall through that razing static, moving in uneven arcs through broken rhythms. In "Pt. II", though, the voices grow and overcome the noise. The horns stretch out like steady winds, sometimes foreboding and low; loops of dulcimers, banjos, and bells float over the long tones, battling through wolf growls and bass throbs to float, at last, above the horns. Frost leaves it to the audience to pick favorites and winners.

Listeners often relegate instrumental music into a series of intrinsic, reductive modifiers-- a drone is meditative, you know, and harsh noise is just mean. Post-rock is cinematic and sweeping, while finger-picked acoustic guitar music is nostalgic and ruminative. Unfairly, pop songs alone get the privilege of simultaneous juxtaposition. That is, Elliott Smith and Brian Wilson can sing heartbreaking words above bright, shining music, and we laud its bittersweet complexity. But when's the last time you heard someone argue for ecstatic noise (consider Fuck Buttons) or busy drones (see Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail)? Probably never. By the Throat demands those kinds of complex distinctions, though. Its radiance is a dark one, and its most sinister moments lead to deliberate calm.

— Grayson Currin

January 8, 2010

________

BBC Review

“Reaches right out of the thought bubble and punches you out of your skin.”

2009-11-10

By David Stubbs

The much-bandied word ‘ambient’ implies something liquid, even gaseous – a balmy, Radox swirl, or pleasingly evocative, beatless atmospherics. Australia-born Ben Frost, who is currently based in Iceland, gives the lie to all of that. By the Throat is as solid and physically assaultive an experience as the title of this, his fourth album attests. It would be only halfway accurate to describe this as a soundtrack to an imaginary horror movie. By the Throat reaches right out of the thought bubble and punches you out of your skin.

Like Fennesz, Ben Frost works with a mixture of electronics and processed guitar, wreaking extreme sounds from the instrument that you could only achieve with the mediation of a laptop. He's supplemented and assisted here by composer Nico Muhly, Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara, all-female Icelandic string quartet Amiina and all-male Swedish metal band Crowpath. Opener Killshot hauls itself across electronic coals in dense, metal lumps, before giving way to simulated lupine howls on The Carpathians which themselves give way to an uneasy, sombre hiatus reminiscent of Arvo Part.

The low-end rumble of looming threat, however, seems only ever yards away, as the growls of what could be some giant cat from Bodmin Moor pawing at the door gradually overwhelm Hibakusja. Peter Venkman, Part I contrasts burrowing cello with the holographic, ethereal choral broadsides heaving in and out like strafing chariots of archangels, before the mood recedes once more, into the anxious, muted brass of Peter Venkman, Part II.

There's a tinkling subcurrent of subdued activity running through By the Throat, and this surfaces on the deceptively banal interlude of Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes. But then the painless violence resumes with the closing three tracks, Through the Glass of the Roof, Through the Roof of Your Mouth and Through the Mouth of Your Eye, in which musique concrete lumps scrape and grind and some monster appears to give birth to a pair of bagpipes by way of a finale.

It's probably no coincidence that By the Throat should have been made in Iceland, with its own, strong community of musicians who draw on the mysterious energies of a country whose landscape is as palpable and remote as that of the moon.

________

From Self-Titled

LONG PLAYER OF THE DAY (HALLOWEEN EDITION): Ben Frost, By the Throat

(Bedroom Community)

Posted on October 31, 2009

The Reason(s) We Can¹t Stop Listening:  We met Ben Frost rather randomly last year‹at Iceland¹s 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 (see: the video below, an early version of ‘Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes’), and now that it¹s finally out, we can hear exactly what took so damn long. A headphone/hi-fi listen that threatens to engulf your very being, Frost¹s 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 there¹s a two-part piece inspired

by Ghostbusters character Peter Venkman, it¹s clear that Frost is hinting at the dark side of Bill Murray¹s psyche, not anything involving proton packs or Slimer. A beautifully-damaged bit of brilliance from start to finish.

RIYL: Shock therapy; Twin Peaks marathons; feeling uncomfortable and loving

every minute of it

________

SF Weekly

Track of the Day: Ben Frost

By Jennifer Maerz in MP3 of the Day

Mon., Nov.  2 2009

If your creepy dreams don't have the best soundtracks, perhaps you should fall asleep with Ben Frost  <http://www.myspace.com/theghostofbenfrost> on your stereo. The Icelandic composer makes eerie, minimalist soundtracks for suspenseful escapades, making excellent use of the tension a string section

can evoke in a song.

Frost's new album, By The Throat, is only a few weeks old and well worth checking out. Here he's collaborated with Icelandic string quartet Amiina, The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metalheads Crowpath, and composer Nico Muhly.

On "The Carpathians," Frost has crafted a track that could easily be used in the old John Carpenter classic The Thing: wild hounds howl and snarl, the threat in their voices building on an electronically-enhanced bed of sprawling synths and strings.

________

From Ben Frost - By The Throat (Bedroom Community)

by Katherine Godfrey

Ben Frost doesn’t make empty threats. When he named his latest album By the Throat he meant it - this is a truly breathtaking album that holds the listener from start to finish. Frost explores the brutal end of the electronic spectrum but never at the expense of emotion. Soundscapes of piano, compressed beats and clicks, akin to the darkest of Efterklang’s output and Chris Adams’ (of Hood) Bracken project, are permeated by the eb and flow of white noise, evoking the danger and paranoia of a band of travellers crossing a barren landscape where wolves, literally, howl and snarl at their heel.

But the enormity of this sound, in part created by layer upon layer of voices, dissipates seamlessly to simple trumpet, distorted cello, and a reappearance of bewitching piano on some of the album’s best tracks: ‘Peter Venkman Part II’ and ‘Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes’. Where those in the Stephen O’Malley school might beat us to a bloody pulp then bury us alive, Frost holds us close, tricking us into security then stabbing us from behind. Perhaps we should’ve seen it coming from an album that is full of musical and emotional nuance.

________

From Drowned In Sound

by Chris Power

Instrumental music tends to conjure images as well as purely aural sensations; colours at the very least, if not more representational forms. Australian born Iceland resident Ben Frost had influenced what By The Throat 'looks' like to me before I'd even heard it, memorably telling the Krakow Post its visual palette is “like the glow from a lava flow, or a burning church.”

Add the screams of the dear currently departing echoing in your ears, a blind run through a snowbound Romanian forest pursued by a pack of ravening wolves, and only the Mystery Man from Lost Highway for company and yes, that’s pretty much what By The Throat, a relentlessly hostile construction, conjures in your mind’s eye.

Frost rightfully won widespread praise for his 2007 album Theory of Machines, which should represent an essential part of any serious collection of recent electronic music. The shards of extreme digital noise that erupted periodically throughout that album are present on By The Throat, but its contrasting moments of blip-filled calm are largely absent: this is a dense, claustrophobic and for the headphones-wearer frequently painful experience.

Wasting no time in announcing its intent, ‘Killshot’ begins with a hesitant but intricate metallic melody before a huge arm of grinding sound sweeps up through the mix, rising into a fuzzy drone before being cut back to a solitary bass pulse. The process then begins again, the abrasive signal turning on itself as treated piano – close to the harpsichord-like sound John Barry favoured – plucked banjo strings and a live-sounding scraping of uncertain origin flitter above it.

‘Killshot’ bleeds directly into the lupine tension of ‘The Carpathians’, gnawing strings swelling over wolf growls that start so low and creaking as to sound like a ship's engines. By the time the respirator-led ‘O God Protect Me’ begins it’s difficult to tell if that’s a title or an unfriendly suggestion as to what you should be begging for. The main vein of terror isn’t even tapped, however, until several tracks later on ‘Peter Venkman Part I’. Named for obscure reasons – at least to me – after Bill Murray’s character in Ghostbusters, ‘...Part I’ sends astringent beams of monotonous chanted vocals peeling past above scraped cellos and a cyclical piano part, the blocks of enveloping noise alternately fraying at the edges and dissolving or contorting themselves into a painfully sharp digital hail. Some sort of respite is briefly offered on ‘Peter Venkman II’, but the soothing balm of its horn playing, similar in mood to the dolorous brass of A Silver Mt. Zion, is nevertheless corroded down into fratured signals at irregular intervals: beauty exists here only as something to be knocked down and trampled.

Such sonic ambushes infest By The Throat. In the midst of the beautiful descending piano chords of the Twin Peaks referencing ‘Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes’ a blade of static erupts without warning, coming to life with an extremely high-frequency version of a distress flare’s hiss. Once this has faded the track’s coda becomes the most beautiful section of the album, clean descending string-playing blending with a more frenetic bowing and echoing wolf cries.

A striking moment in an album that’s rich in them, ‘Leo...’ stands with the earlier ‘Híbakúsja’ as the most conventionally musical pieces on the album. The latter, with a melody reminiscent of Hauschka’s autumnal melancholy, metamorphoses into a stunning roiling compact of pained human breath, serrated slashes of random frequency and spurts of electronic noise flapping across the stereo channels.

Extraordinary as that is, the album’s closing trilogy – ‘Through the Glass of the Roof’, ‘Through the Roof of Your Mouth’ (these featuring some cacophonous drum damage from Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara) and ‘Through the Mouth of Your Eye’, impress all the more for burying the piano at the very back of the mix. Front and centre are muffled bass thumps and dissonant string scrapes, bleeding machine growls and competing found-sound whines. The subliminal bass tones and distant gentle melody of ‘Through the Mouth of Your Eye’ might leave us wishing that Frost, an accomplished conjuror of beauty in the midst of hellish noise, had displayed more of this aspect of his huge talent on By The Throat, but for now it’s enough for us to warm our hands by the flames of that burning church, one eye on the darkness at our backs.

________

From In Your Speakers

Ben Frost: By The Throat

By The Throat is why I want to spend the rest of my life writing about music. There is an incredible feeling that comes along when you hear an album that you don’t want to put into words, not because it is some

euphoric, beautiful or joyful experience but because it literally pins you to your chair and does not let you come up for a breath. This is an album to be lived in. Avant-garde composer Ben Frost has completed something that is as equally terrifying as it is breathtaking, as claustrophobic as it is expansive, and as squarely rooted in the 21st century as it is timeless.

An Australian native, Ben Frost has been channeling the frozen expanses of his adopted home of Iceland for four years now. Frost is easily one of the most creative forces working between the margins of classical music, electronic and noise. Following his critically-lauded 2007 release Theory of Machines, and a Risk-like takeover of almost every continent, Ben Frost returns with a diverse list of sonic co-conspirators ranging from NY Golden-boy Nico Muhly to Swedish Death Metal band Crowspath, as well as Arcade Fire drummer, Jeremy Gara, and Iceland¹s best string quartet, Amiina. Ben Frost returns to thickly processed waves of brutal noise processed through the nihilism of Black Metal over classical compositions and ephemeral electronics. Sort of like Machinefabriek remixing a Sunno))) track, or Swans recording with William Basinski.

Images of teeth-baring wolves stalk the front cover and provide moments of loaded punctuation to an equally teeth-baring screed of processed noise. By The Throat never really lets you come up for air. Compositions move from ominous to downright terror-inducing in the blink of an eye. The album opener, ³Killshot² starts with layers of skittering electronics until a tidal-wave of harsh noise overcomes your headphones. The move is so deliberate and ferocious you literally feel the sound being sucked in from all available outlets to announce the initial noise burst. The most ominous and understated track on the album is ³The Carpathians,² a three-minute ambient piece punctuated by howling and snarling wolves, manically bowed

strings, and waves of thick processed guitars over the low rumble of pounded major chords on a deeply buried piano. The cacophony gives way to the repeated motif of a field recording of someone gasping for breath, while an EKG machine beeps menacingly in the background on the following track, ³O God Protect Me.² The breaths become more labored as the electronic beat, slowly pulsing as a heartbeat, eventually becomes more sporadic until it stops dead.

³Hibakusja² starts with a slight reprieve of mournful trumpets and plucked/strummed claviers before surrendering to darker territory. This track is the most evidently influenced by Neo-Classical composer Nico Muhly. The collaboration is spot-on with Muhly directing the repeated themes in the style of classical minimalism while Ben Frost layers heavily-processed Cellos and field recordings of fractured breathing and harsh feedback. Of everything that Nico Muhly has contributed to this year‹from Antony & the Johnsons, to Mew, to Grizzly Bear‹his collaborations with Ben Frost, not being restricted to pop music, have allowed his sophisticated melodies run their full course

Ben Frost has the uncanny ability to clearly announce his intentions, while leaving you completely stunned in the process. A super-low electronic bass hit introduces, without fail, when the track is about to make an abrupt shift between themes. Between the two tracks ³Peter Venkman Pt I and Peter Venkman Pt II,² there are about a dozen tempo changes, introductions of various instruments/sounds, and a vocal choir that comes lapping in and out of the audio field like waves. Every such change is marked by a similar low bass hit‹a pretty gutsy move seeing that most musicians shock by pulling a weak sleight-of-hand before switching up a tempo. The effect is not unexpected, but it is still awe-inspiring.

I compare this album very favorably to Sunno)))¹s last track “Alice” on Monoliths & Dimensions. ³Alice² starts off as a metal track and ends as a piece of classical music; the change comes about so subtly that it takes a few minutes to realize it has occurred. Ben Frost follows a similar course; a track that thirty seconds before was so brutal and terrifying gives way to a beautiful coda of classical music before you gather your battered senses and begin to recognize what is happening. Ben Frost moves between genres with apparent ease, and his virtuosity is displayed in each of the chosen genres, as well as in his ability to re-contextualize disparate parts into a distinct patchwork of 21st century ideas. This is minimalism for the post-apocalypse. This is the best album of 2009.

by Ryan Hall

________

From Boomkat

BEN FROST - By The Throat
BEDROOM COMMUNITY

Ben Frost's 2007 album Theory Of Machines caused quite a stir within the electronic music community, shattering genre conventions with its deft conflation of intensely dark metal, academic electroacoustics and blissful, drone-weaving modern classical touches. By The Throat takes these same principles and develops them into something altogether grander. This is an album of contradictions: during the opening piece 'Killshot', you'll be exposed to music that's both viscerally hard on the ears and achingly beautiful, combining gracefully cinematic dulcimer melodies and mesmeric swells of noise that swirl amid a sea of nerve-shredding electronics. The track segues into a dirge of howling wolves with 'The Carpathians', a piece of doom-laden menace that competes with the grimmest moments of SunnO))) or KTL in terms of intensity. We're only a couple of tracks in so far, but already this is shaping up to be pretty special. Despite opening with a tuneful flurry of string plucks, 'Hibakusja' soon reveals a darker side, collapsing into a horrifying mess of respiratory unpleasantness, as if soundtracking a drowning man trying to keep afloat - the field recordings of someone desperately drawing breath take on a creepily emotive timbre once immersed in serrated noise signals and melancholy string arpeggios. This is no easy ride, yet despite the disturbing undercurrents and horror soundtrack tactics this album never ceases to sound beautiful. Co-produced by Frost and the dependably excellent Valgeir Sigurðsson, By The Throat also owes some of its sonic prowess to contributions from Amiina, The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara and fellow Bedroom Community star Nico Muhly. This formidable and far-reaching body of work might be one of 2009's most singularly impressive listening experiences, and very likely the only record you'll hear this year whose repertoire consists of both luscious classical chamber compositions and the hunting calls of killer whales... A very high recommendation.

________

From Forest Gospel

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Ben Frost - By The Throat

(2009, Bedroom Community)

Ben Frost’s music carves at your nerves. On his last record, Theory of Machines, Frost created a tension filled industrio-noise masterpiece filled with delayed climaxes of other worldly proportions. It was one of the few records that I have heard that can be more aptly described as an experience than simply as music. You don’t just listen to it, you experience it. On By The Throat, Frost takes the experience of Machines up a notch; in fact, the album title says it all. There is something about this most recent Frost album that just devours you. Listening to this album has plunged me into a stark mindset, more claustrophobic and paranoid than I can ever remember feeling. The album art is actually a pretty successful portrait of the music Frost has created. By The Throat sounds and feels like a pack of wild beast, strung out, starving and circling you in preparation for an attack. The music is constantly teetering on the edge of that moment just before they lunge for your throat. I guess it is also important to note some of the contributors playing on By The Throat. Frost has pulled in a pretty impressive array of musicians including Amiina, The Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara, some Swedish metal band called Crowpath and fellow Bedroom Community compatriot, Nico Muhly. Yet, even with those big names, By The Throat is in every way a Ben Frost album and it is all the better for it. And, as a Frost creation, it is difficult to describe. There is definitely a compositional feel along with a lot of electronics, some field recordings and guitar torture. By The Throat finds a prefect middle ground between neo classical, drone and noise. And, while sometimes those genres can turn flat and flacid, By The Throat is an album that does not allow for passive listening. There will never be a time when you can just play the album in the background as the casual accompaniment for some frivolous activity. No, By The Throat is simply too emotionally confrontational and too aurally invasive to be an after thought. With growling and howling from instruments and real wolves alike, Frost's work burrows deep, digging its claws into your psyche. Frost’s composition boasts a ferocious muscularity and a grizzly aura that feels too real to be labeled as horror. Really, there is some mad gluttonous grit and terror at work here that provides just about as powerful a musical experience that one is likely to have. Make room in your top ten of 2009 and welcome the new king of compositional doom.

-Thistle

________

From Headphone Commute

Ben Frost - By The Throat (Bedroom Community)

I first listened to Ben Frost when he released his sophomore full length album, Theory Of Machines on Bedroom Community back in 2007. I described his music as ambient hardcore - psychologically raw, punishing, and overdriven guitars, with reverberated pads and rhythms that mutate into white noise and back, sending chills that originate deep from within your ear canal and slide down to your toenails. That album left a lasting impression on me. Enough to select it as one of the best albums of the year. I didn't think that Theory Of Machines could be outdone... That is... until I put on By The Throat. While listening to Theory Of Machines, I compared Frost's sound to that of an angry furry armadillo, creeping up the inside of my legs with a cold long needle, leaving me drenched in sweat. And with this latest installment, the chills rise up my spine and hold me, in perpetual, electric shock. The cover art alone puts into my mind the images of my final moments, lying naked on the snow, steam rising from the breath of a hungry wolf, his teeth sunk into my throat. And the track titles do not let up. Through The Glass Of The Roof, Through The Roof Of Your Mouth, Through The Mouth Of Your Eye. And the music? Dark grinding metallic strings scratched through distorted pads, deep breaths, growls, and choking melodies. The intensity of the bass and guitar riffs create instant goose bumps, tickling the inside of my ears, and clawing at my chest. White knuckled at the seat, I think I accidentally scratched a healing scab off of my back and now I'm bleeding through this white collar shirt, the tie restricting my cries. Let me out! I've heard some dark and terrifying ambiance in my lifetime, but Frost's onslaught is incredible. I stand applauding. And the production? We've got top notch mastering going on here, with perfectly sampled strings played with dry bows over thumping kick, and rising voices. With contributions from Jeremy Gara of The Arcade Fire, Icelandic quartet Amiina, Swedish grindcore band Crowpath, and of course, the classical touch of Nico Muhly the roster of artists is exciting alone. Oh, and did I mention that it was co-produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson? It was created under the cloak of nocturnal snow in the far northern reaches of financial-fantasy island, a concept borne of Frost and weapons manufacturer, war monger and evil genius Sruli Recht, captured by the all-seeing-eye of Bjarni Gríms and forged in the fires of hell by Rebeca Mendéz… Frost's music is all about contrast - merging beautiful classical minimalism with the dirty grind of metal and drone core. This combination is unsettling to the mind, refusing to split in half and choose between the genres. Born in Australia, Frost is now living in Reykjavik, Iceland - home of the above mentioned artists, and of course Sigurðsson’s acclaimed Bedroom Community label. His debut solo album, titled Steel Wound, was released on Room40 in 2003. There's also a two-track digital EP, released together with Lawrence English, titled Anyone Can Play... Anyone Can Sing (Dreamland, 2004). In 2007, Frost released Theory Of Machines on Bedroom Community, and spent the next two years cooped up to dream up this nightmare. Let me restate my earlier conviction: By The Throat is even better than Theory Of Machines - a feat I thought impossible to bear. This is the music of suspense. The terror of the unknown. The ethereal melody at the end of the tunnel that gets cemented off a few inches away from your desperate crawl. The piano keys expand and shrink with pressure, and the white and black chip off and vanish. The tension ends with the last track, and although you can exhale, you want to feel the angst again. You want to feel. You want to feel...

________

From Mapsadaisical

Ben Frost, By The Throat (Bedroom Community)

October 19, 2009

Ben Frost’s debut for the Bedroom Community label, Theory Of Machines, was one of my favourite records of a few years back, a skilful blend of ambient drones and electronica with much harsher, processed sounds. So which direction will he go in for the follow up? Well, it is called By The Throat. The front cover has a pack of wolves on it. What do you reckon?

In case you hadn’t guessed, this isn’t an easy listen. In fact it sounds like Frost has spent the last few years listening to those masters of the abrasive texture, Pan Sonic. Right from first track “Killshot”, the album bares its teeth, repeated heavily granulated snarls rising to a malevolent howl by its end. The thread/threat of violence runs throughout in widescreen horror film style. Those wolves make a couple of guest appearances, firstly amongst the wailing sirens of “The Carpathians“, and then again on the dirty drone outro of “Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes”. Why does he need new shoes? Because WOLVES ATE THEM, obviously. Even the relatively pretty horns and majestic melodies of “Hibakusja” are set about with electronic machinery which chews them up and spits them out, leaving them in such a state that they could only be recognised by dental records. This is horrible. Horrible in its lesser-used sense in which it means “utterly brilliant”.

The combined list of musicians featured on the credits is lengthy, including labelmates Valgeir Sigurdsson, Sam Amidon and Nico Muhly, as well as the strings of Amiina and the undefinable talents of Lawrence English. However By The Throat feels like the realisation of one man’s brutal visions, and when Ben Frost grabs you, he is pretty hard to shake off. By The Throat is available now from Bedroom Community.

________

From The 405

BEN FROST - BY THE THROAT

October 14, 2009

Label: Bedroom Community
Release date: 19/10/09

Producer, experimental composer, sound artist, and manipulator of the elements that fool the mind. Ben Frost brings us his second solo work, as yet again, one of the four great minded pillars of the Bedroom Community label. By The Throat is not to be listened to as an album made up of separate tracks, but as one long dream, stretching your eardrums through a disorientating tunnel, sound-tracking your deepest thoughts and moments of escape from real life.

This is something that I would usually save until the end, but I'll have out with it now; The record, upon first listen, is not only my album of year, but my number one deep listening album of all time. As the listener follows the progress of the sound piece, one is constantly, subtly bewildered by the juxtaposing of white noise, blips, flicks, shreds and howls, with fine minimalist instrumentals. Just the brushing of bows against string instruments causes one to quiver, while attempting to comprehend the supernatural vocals and the eerie streams of electronics. All the while the blissful waves of white noise keep coming back, sometimes accompanied by instruments recorded with such detail, that you can hear with great intimacy, the sound of the brass players taking breath before they breathe into their horns.

As mentioned at the start, this is an album that is most rewarding when listened to as a whole piece, but there are moments that stray off to form something new, which can be taken in as separate sections. For most of 'Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes' for instance, the whole experience becomes far more quiet, with the simple plodding and plucking of piano and eastern strings. Towards the end however, Frost skillfully lulls us back to the familiar atmosphere of the full piece; the howling and the trademark white noise returns and for the rest of the album we go through the ever more enchanting motions that the artist has to offer.

A piece of experimental sound that is not for the faint of heart or for those with an attention deficit, but more than rewarding to those who listen with a desire to get lost. It grasps you more frequently as you go back for another listen. The real wonder of By The Throat is its levels of frightening beguile, and it will echo in your deepest thoughts for days on end.

Rating: 10/10

Written by Will Slater

________

10.10.2009

From The Silent Ballet

Ben Frost - By the Throat

Score: 8.5/10

Many recording artists claim they “don’t sound like anyone else” and “can’t be pigeonholed into a genre.” Few live up to this claim, but Ben Frost is a true original, and his new album makes an imperative statement: top this. Why is Ben Frost so good? Because he’s eager to collaborate, not simply by inviting guest stars along, but by listening to and incorporating their ideas. As an integral part of Iceland’s Bedroom Community, Frost is one of a rotating cast of musicians who have been touched by fire: Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson are two names well-known to our readers. Last fall, I had the opportunity to see Frost in Iceland, sharing a stage with Kippi Kaninus and Amiina, and seldom have I witnessed such an unselfish performance. Everybody played their part, but nobody sought the spotlight.

Frost’s influences are myriad. There’s a touch of Pärt (apparent here on “Peter Venkman Pt II”), a bow to industrial grind (the crunching opener, “Killshot”), and even a hat-tip to Japanese minimalism (“Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes”). And yet, no piece falls into a distinct genre; each is a stitching, far more than the sum of its parts. Nico Muhly makes an appearance, as do Amiina, Jeremy Gara (drummer for Arcade Fire), and Swedish metal combo Crowpath. This international cross-pollination breeds one of the year’s most exciting splices. And then there are the wolves, howling a snow-bound path between the first two tracks and appearing again half an hour later, just when it seems the danger has passed. This is dangerous, visionary music. There’s welcome restraint, but nothing ambivalent, nothing shy.

Where did all this anger come from? It was bound to happen in the wake of Iceland’s economic collapse, one which brought embarrassment to the nation as even “the world’s most peaceful citizens” were incited to riot. Distinctively Icelandic, however, were the phalanxes of citizens who shielded officers from the more raucous, brick-throwing protesters, demonstrating peace in the middle of turmoil, hope in the middle of conflict, a stolid reminder that there was something worth fighting for: not finances, but the definition of national character. This same tension exists in Frost’s compositions. Aching beauty haunts the sonic cracks, not only in the abrasion, but in the predominance of melody, the lilting of strings, and the quiet moments of the album’s closing trilogy. We are left incomplete, let down gently, asked to continue the story ourselves.

The music scene is hot on new labels, attaching the “post” prefix to everything imaginable: post-psychedelic, post-industrial, post-rock. Ecclesiastes once wrote, “There is nothing new in the whole wide world.” But he was wrong. This is something new. Give me a hundred albums like this, and I’ll buy them all. But there won't be a hundred albums like this, because we don’t have a hundred composers who are simultaneously this daring and this talented, who are able to produce sounds so raw and yet so finessed, so otherworldly and yet so naggingly familiar, as if we’d encountered them somewhere in some distant dream, some pre-incarnation, some apocalyptic vision. The respirator that lends “O God Protect Me” its buried pulse is symbolic of the sounds herein: this is the birth of the new.

Highlights? There’s really no point. This isn’t an album of pick-and-choose, a salad bar of downloadable singles. Dispose of any single track and a hole appears. Instead, focus on the moments: the opening wedges of “Killshot,” which do just what the title promises; the brass introduction of “Hibakusja;” the gasping breaths that trail in its wake; the glistening glissandos of “Peter Venkman” (Bill Murray’s character in “Ghostbusters” -- the artist is not without humor); and the wolves, always the wolves. Time after time, this album provides such crystalline passages that the listener is bound to stop and take notice, to sit up, as if suddenly caffeinated, and to ask, what is going on here?

By the Throat is a break in the evolutionary ladder, a jump across links in the Darwinian chain, a re-mapping of sonic DNA. And the best part – the punchline, the denouement, the icing on the cake – is that the sounds are accessible to the common listener: neither atonal nor bizarre, but a natural outgrowth of colliding fields. Frost has chosen what works, discarded what doesn’t, culled the herd to bring us something we can bite into, something that we will return to, something that will survive. By the final note, Frost has taken modern music off the respirator and sent it once again trekking into the wild unknown.

Richard Allen

________

05.10.2009

From The Silent Ballet

Ben Frost - By the Throat

Ben Frost has emerged as one of the truly unique voices in the experimental electronica world in the past decade. And while many of his peers on the fringes have slowly succumbed to popular opinion and drifted towards the "accessible", the "easy listening", the "mainstream", Mr. Frost's latest seems to be a direct critique of this splintering of the field; all things considered, By the Throat endorses a Call of the Wild type abandonment of popular culture and Mr. Frost would certainly be tickled at the idea that this album was created by a musician who had given up his home to live with a pack of wolves. What results is an album as visceral as the title and imagery would imply. It is an unsettling, jarring album, but even through the density of ideas crammed into every track and the purposefully challenging compositions, the listener still gets the sense that they're listening to the work of a master. Highly recommended.

________

Thursday, October 1, 2009

From Everything is Chemical : Ben Frost - By The Throat

8.75 out of 10

2007 was a landmark year for "electronic" music. I was completely floored by a relatively unknown (at the time) producer named Ben Frost an his (then) new opus, "Theory Of Machines". As I stated in my review for it, "..The smartest electronic album I own.." To this day that holds true, however, in close second, would be "By The Throat" Ben Frost's first full length release since his 2007 opus. Please, please, do yourself a BIG favor, go out and buy a decent pair of headphones (as if you don't already own any), buy this album, and let your imagination go. Warning: Do NOT listen to this album if you are spooked easily.

I didn't know what to expect with this release, it seemed that with "Theory Of Machines" the title spoke miles for the music. Very electronic (and somehow organic too), daunting, and precisely made factory noise/emotion. Does that mean with "By The Throat" I should expect an intense amount of dark/pure anger, dramatic swells and slams, and maybe tones/sounds that could make me pee myself (just a little anyways)? Yes, yes it does. "By The Throat" begins with a track drenching in fear, howling wolves/other goose bump driven samples, and what seems like a bit of a warning sigh to the listener ..At this point you are still safe, you are right outside the walls ..any further, and it becomes a tragedy. The narrative will give you the sense of character trying to escape from torture & lament, without a way out. They may get a few moments to stop and catch their breathe, but they can never stop looking behind them, ever. Evil is lurking around every note/droney noise with great wrath and furious vengeance. On "Hibakusja" you get the sense of a giant/gnarly beast breathing down your neck, just waiting for you to run away so he can get some exercise before he devours you. On "Peter Venkman Part II", it seems our character has given up and become a part of his environment. What's the point? There is no winning anyways. But maybe, what's this? .."Through The Glass Of The Roof", someone (or something) is fighting back, our character still has some "fight" left in him/her. You can only push a man so much before he falls to his own anger and pushes back. You were warned, now he's pissed, and you've just been watching him.. You never tried to help him at all. What the hell is wrong with you? You asked for it, his nightmare is only the beginning of yours... You are now a part of his world, you are stuck. You can not pull away. Welcome to the scariest/most fierce horror film you will ever hear.

Go consume, go, Now. If you like music that challenges your every sense and emotion, this scare was made for you.. Guest musicians include; Valgeir Sigurðsson, Amiina, The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metal group Crowpath, and composer Nico Muhly. THIS is how "ambient" albums make up for "lack of words" with more emotion and intelligence than any human could ever capture with words. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Standout Tracks: ALL. The whole album unfolds like a dark horror story based on the creepiest woods you could ever stumble upon. Each chapter(song) carries the story into deeper & darker territories.. (but if I had to pick) "Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes"

Posted by maestro.-.mischief

________

From THE MILK FACTORY

Sep 25th 2009

BEN FROST: By The Throat

Bedroom Community HVALUR6 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

By themilkman

________

From: WORD - like a scientist

Sat 19 Sep 2009

Ben Frost – By The Throat (Bedroom Community)

Music community, brace yourselves. Ben Frost is set to occupy best of lists again and generate twice the press the critically-lauded Theory of Machines garnered a couple years ago. His third album, the fantastically complex By The Throat does what few albums are able to, somehow take their popular predecessor and almost completely erase it from your memory while listening to the fresh material. Comparisons are not even apt. Even though he employs guitars and noise again, this is a completely different animal. Opener “Killshot” is perhaps the best track, combining gentle electronics, a repeating guitar melody, and a fantastically looping slice of delayed feedback that cuts off abruptly every measure, it’s the perfect start to this exploration of experimental guitar music. “The Carpathians” presents an ominous and devastated landscape of snarling, howling beasts accompanied by heavy piano and soaring strings. I see the aftermath of a massive battle in this song whereas “O God Protect Me,” a winding and pensive melody, conjures the image of a warrior slowly dying and wondering how the end will come. “Híbakúsja” contrasts this opening salvo of songs with a gorgeous and altogether brighter atmosphere, even with it’s mournful horns and slow percussion backing the light guitar work. Sure enough, a mean shock of feedback and noise phases in to this, rumbling and shifting throughout the track. I’m not entirely sure where the connection to the movie is, but the two-part “Peter Venkman” introduces careening voices as instruments into Frost’s repertoire, as the glue holding this suite of delay-ridden guitar noise together, a tableau of horror if there ever was one, finally culminating in a horn lament towards the end. The seven minute “Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes” is certainly Frost at his most beautiful, pushing fragile guitar plucking to the forefront and letting it remain virtually untouched for the length of the composition, only letting pianos and some light noise grit come in mid-way. The intriguingly titled three-part “Through The Glass Of The Roof/Through The Roof Of Your Mouth/Through The Mouth Of Your Eye” closes out By The Throat with a trilogy of chaotic percussion and guitar experiments. It’s shocking how fresh and unique this album is, a truly singular artist at the height of his craft. And that’s saying something, given the impression that Theory of Machines left. Here’s to hoping for a long and exciting career.

- Keith Pishnery

________