Published November 17, 2009
On By The Throat, artwork and music unfolds like a Scandinavian thriller.
On Ben Frost’s new album, artwork and music unfolds like a Scandinavian thriller. Headlights claw their way into the nothingness, ambient werewolves slice through shadows and echo the nervous swells of secret instruments bark by guttural bark. Blood-soaked snowbanks feed crystallized plasma into porous ice.
Ben’s music has always been cinematic but lately he’s been ploughing into it with a mad fever. Between composing for miniseries and Australian thrillers, it seems he may be slipping away from us. It’s a pity, since he’s one of the most visual (and visceral) musicians working out of Iceland these days. If nature is a playground to Sigur Rós, then to Ben it’s a battlefield. His Iceland is the kind of arid plane where religion is born—desperate chants to smother an unforgiving climate.
His music doesn’t pulsate or tick—it flows and merges. It’s the sound of clenching and unclenching, of tension and release. Sounds are fed, sustained and brought to slaughter.
- MySpace: theghostofbenfrost
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