Ben Frost - Electronic Ice

Born in 1980 in Melbourne, Australia, but an adopted Icelander, Ben Frost is one of the most interesting and innovative young composers of the new generation of contemporary experimental electronic music. Over the years his discography has evolved from the minimalism of his early youthful experiments, gradually taking on influences from the genre's sacred monsters: the glitch of Fennesz, the post-minimalism of Oren Ambarchi, the dub of Loscil, the sonic cathedrals of Tim Hecker, Lawrence English or Rafael Anton Irisarri, right up to a sonic power more closely comparable to the avant-garde rock maximalism of Glenn Branca. His often extreme violence, at its peak moments, has been able to transcend mere sound to embrace an emotional element whose endpoint lies in anguish and fear. Another defining aspect of Ben Frost has been a different and more intense use of the guitar within electronic music, revealing a certain influence from the world of extreme metal too; an "other" approach to the instrument that stands as one of his main trademarks. While these elements recur across his many LPs, Frost has shown a coherent artistic vision, perceptible through a characteristic violence of sound, the use of deafening drones capable of depicting real facets of contemporary society (industrial noise, modern neuroses), and a gift for sonic manipulation that has set him apart from the scene he originally came from.

Early experiences

His prolific career began quietly with the semi-clandestine Music For Sad Children (2001), which, in its simplicity, reveals a highly cultured young musician fascinated by American minimalism and the loops of William Basinski, but also attuned to the various evolutions of contemporary electronic music (from dub to glitch to drum'n'bass).
Music For Sad Children is undoubtedly a handmade, lo-fi effort, often not even listed in official discographies, yet it contains tracks that show an unmistakable talent foreshadowing a career of real substance (the piano loops of "Poking Holes In Your Research", the dark litany of "Age 13… With A Screwdriver" or the intimate piano-and-electronic-drum melodies of "Hiding In The Ether").

In 2002 he launched a project – under the name School Of Emotional Engineering – together with bassist Daniel Rejmer, guitarist Andy Hazel, violinist Russell Fawkus and drummer Jova Albers. Released in 2004, it shows Frost's early interest in collaboration, which would become extremely frequent in the years that followed. The project acts as a bridge between his early career, which had begun the previous year, and the artistic maturity that was soon to come.
School Of Emotional Engineering echoes the preceding Music For Sad Children, but it contains elements ranging from trip-hop ("Of Angel Dust") to minimal piano ("To Be Continued" and "Refrain"). The most original track, the one that best captures a glimpse of Frost's near future, is a kind of ballad suspended between cosmic ambient, rock and trip-hop: the poetic, romantic "Falling For Sylvia".

The cosmic Ben Frost

But the real album that elevated Frost to the ranks of the leading young contemporary electronic composers is Steel Wound (2003), a surprising cosmic journey that recalls the glory days of the German kosmische musik pioneers, enriched with guitar manipulations that merge the expansive textures of Schulze with the psychedelic trips of Ash Ra Tempel. The result manages to move from the gloom of the impenetrable drones of "Swarm" and "I Lay My Ear To Furious Latin" to soaring guitar notes in the majestic ten minutes of "You Me And The End Of Everything", an imposing cosmic symphony that is at once powerful and lysergic, and remains one of the most inspired peaks of his discography.
The use of guitar becomes increasingly dominant on "Last Exit To Brooklyn" and "And I Watched You Breathe", both caught in perpetual conflict between ambient textures and manipulated guitar distortion, tracing a shared path between two different worlds (ambient and noise-rock). The title track, on the other hand, is a Schulze-like drone, gloomy and claustrophobic, building steadily toward a finale that pushes tension to its limits.

We Love You Michael Gira

Meanwhile, his interests shift toward far more pronounced noise elements and much heavier distortion; with his long, monumental pieces, Frost becomes a reference point for a new way of approaching contemporary experimental electronic music.
The beautiful Theory Of Machines (2006) turns toward sheer sonic grandeur (four long compositions), an element already evident in the nod to Swans in the track "We Love You Michael Gira": glitch, distorted synths, obsessive pulsations, chaotic development and a cathartic finale that – in the two deafening minutes of "Coda" – erupts into a pounding electronic nightmare.
The Gira reference might actually fit even better with the grandiloquent suite "Theory Of Machines", which sounds like an electronic version of one of Swans' masterpieces, "Helpless Child". "Stomp (Lux et Nox)" is a nightmare somewhere between tribal and industrial, where metallic noises and bursts of distortion tear through moments of calm. But the masterpiece of the set is "Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water", a slow, austere composition that is nonetheless charged with mounting tension and anxiety. A slow, robotic crescendo that is genuinely moving, the inhuman turned human, built from a handful of rising synth notes reminiscent of a vibraphone, leading to a string finale that recalls the most inspired moments of Max Richter, overturning unease into a liberating catharsis.

After this gem of 2000s electronic music, Frost incredibly manages to outdo himself once again. Pushing the insights of Theory Of Machines (2006) to their extreme, he releases his masterpiece, By The Throat (2009), a true electronic magma overflowing with ideas that pushes his icy aesthetic to its zenith. Not merely an album, but a genuine extreme listening experience. The horrifying sonic maelstrom that Frost manages to build hits like a punch on every track of the album; fear, unease, extreme tension and anguish are the elements the work communicates from start to finish.
This is the peak of expressive power for an aesthetic that has by now been contaminated by a wealth of stylistic elements and a surprising number of sonic solutions. The almost Faust-like power of "Killshot" is striking, an endless whirlwind of electronic vortices of unheard-of violence, with the decibels rising – never as an end in itself or to mask a lack of ideas – but to convey dramatic feelings that build second by second. So much force dissipates into the incredible "The Carpathians", where the furious howling of wolves sounds like the hypothetical soundtrack to the expressionist cinema of Nosferatu or Murnau's Faust, directed by Murnau. Pure, relentless cosmic horror. Still more drones of a violence that wrench the listener from their calm and shake them into an unknown dimension on "Híbakúsja". Suffocated drones, almost the spasms of primordial creatures in search of freedom.
But the masterpiece within the masterpiece is the double-length "Peter Venkman", which charts a course between Ligeti's anguished symphonies and the strings of Klaus Schulze, between the horror of deep space and the incommunicability of the human psyche. Choirs poised between human and robotic sit alongside piano notes and shattering guitar drones; in the second half, a sinister guitar arpeggio and the sound of trumpets close, with mighty melancholy, what may well stand as Frost's most important composition.

Collaborations, soundtracks and work for theatre and dance

By now appreciated the world over, Ben Frost starts receiving a range of collaboration offers; the years that follow see him taking on the challenge of soundtrack work, for films, TV series and documentaries alike. In 2010 he's chosen to score Amnesty International's documentary The Invisibles (2010), about immigration from Central and South America; Frost adapts to the directors' needs and requests, but still shows strong ties to the post-minimalism of Oren Ambarchi ("Seaworld", "Invisible"), while the most original track is the odd combination of guitar and strings on "The Gravity Of Numbers". Despite the strict constraints, Ben Frost still manages to move the listener and strike right at the heart.

The following year brings the very short soundtrack for Australian director Julia Leigh's film Sleeping Beauty (2011), but above all the splendid collaboration with Daníel Bjarnason on Solaris (2011).
Taking a great classic of science-fiction cinema like Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris" – inspired by the novel by Stanisław Lem – and attempting to craft an ideal soundtrack for it is an ambitious and risky project in equal measure. Frost is a musician tied to noise and often cacophonous post-industrial elements, while Bjarnason leans more toward symphonic territory. What they're up against is a giant, arguably the greatest science-fiction film ever made outside the usual English-speaking boundaries; what's more, "Solaris" (1972) is also an extremely psychological and complex film, closer to arthouse cinema than genre fare. Yet the symbiosis between Bjarnason's string-and-piano symphonism and Frost's experimental electronics carries us into a world suspended between dream and cosmic atmosphere, perfectly suited to the psychological science fiction of "Solaris". This time Frost steps slightly aside to give more space to Bjarnason's symphonies; strings and electronics combine as if the cosmic music of Tangerine Dream had been placed at the service of classical symphonic writing. The album is so well received by Brian Eno that he decides to collaborate on an audiovisual project using footage from Tarkovsky's film. Unforgettable are the minimal prepared-piano notes of "Cruel Miracles", the cosmic flows of "We Don't Need Other Worlds, We Need Mirrors", the impetuous strings of "Unbreakable Silence", the romantic symphonism of "Simulacra" and the hints of claustrophobic avant-garde in "Saccades".

In the years that follow, Frost enriches his career with new experiences that would leave their mark. 2013 is the year of collaborations with two contemporary dance companies (Chunky Move and The Icelandic Dance Company).
Black Marrow pushes even further the dark, glacial character of By The Throat, taking its claustrophobic elements to the extreme. The sampled cries of animals and dehumanized humans on "Undulating Beast" linger in the memory for their rawness and emotional force, thanks to the right balance of electronics, strings, brass and field recordings. The quasi-Eastern arpeggios of "Carbon Vessel Motherfucker" are hypnotic from start to finish, yet never stray from a mood utterly devoid of hope; there's a brilliant moment where guitar strings abruptly give way – without any break in continuity – to a melancholy piano and trumpet. The hammering rhythms of "Metal On Skin" engage Frost's industrial soul, still with an unwavering ability to grip the listener. It's remarkable how Frost keeps finding a new identity while essentially keeping his aesthetic and his mission unchanged; from his early days as a young electronic music student to solo composer, to soundtracks and contemporary dance, his vision adapts without ever being distorted or betrayed.

That same year he releases FaR (2013), music for a piece by British contemporary dance choreographer Wayne McGregor. This time the most obvious reference points are the Philip Glass of "Einstein On The Beach" and his vocal explorations. Female voices and avant-garde merge ("Stocks And Stones", "In Flesh And Blood") in compositions of great allure that culminate in the lyrical symphonism of "After Death Nothing Is". There's no shortage of unexpected influences either, from glitch ("Sinew/Bone") to the metal-tinged finale over an electronic backdrop of "Enlightenment (Hold Onto Me)".

In 2013 he composes the music for the stage adaptation of a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory. Frost is perfectly at ease within the constraints of music for theatre or dance; it almost seems as though these standard-imposed limitations help him channel and focus his creativity. The novel tells the brutal story of two psychopathic, misogynistic and violent boys, given since childhood to killing animals, with absent parents and terrible company. It's an indictment of the alienation of modern society, of a life with no interest beyond the animalistic venting of one's own instincts. Perfect territory for Frost, who skillfully alternates sung passages with dark electronic nightmares ("My Greatest Enemies Are Women And The Sea"), leading the listener by the hand into the characters' diseased psychology. Emblematic of these experiments is the closing track "Inferno", a monumental mix of operatic music, strings and violent electronic intrusions.
Released only in 2016, The Wasp Factory is the work of a modern composer perfectly capable of combining experimentation with communicative power.

A new turn

After these interludes, Frost releases a new solo album, the controversial AURORA (2014). It marks a genuine turning point, in which the composer leans on sheer sonic power in an attempt to hold together a jumble of ideas that struggle to cohere. Where technology once served as a vehicle for expressing emotions, moods or atmospheres, it now seems to shift toward the use of electronic artifice as an end in itself, giving the impression of a none-too-fruitful attempt to constantly chase the showy effect, chaotic noise with no real structure. AURORA makes an impetuous maximalism its hallmark, but this leads to nothing more than mere sound, a mere rise in decibels. Whatever Frost wants to communicate, his new message seems locked away in his own mind, with no way for the listener to grasp its meaning except by reading his interviews. The sound, saturated to an almost unbelievable degree, baroque and overflowing, is – at the same time – the least engaging and most exhausting thing Frost has ever created; never more than here does addition actually feel like subtraction.
Some tracks work better than others (the apocalyptic sound of "Sola Fide", the industrial tribalism with solemn synths of "Secant", or the martial march with vibraphones of "Venter"), but overall the album is a disappointment for anyone who deeply experienced the atmospheres of his previous records. That same year sees the release of VARIANT, a series of remixes of tracks from AURORA.

If the signs of a creative dry spell seem evident, Frost finds himself again within the framework of the soundtrack, confirming that his creativity needs clearly defined boundaries to find the right direction. 2017 brings the score for the noir TV series Fortitude. Here we find a composer putting himself entirely at the service of the series. A sign of maturity that gives us small gems of electronic music such as "Impossibilities", with synths and female choirs intertwining, the tribal rhythms of "Tupilaq", the cosmic flows of "Permafrost" or the satanic choirs of "Mammoth Suite". The brevity and effectiveness of these tracks recall the small ambient watercolors of Brian Eno's "Music For Films" (1978).

In 2017 Frost releases a new solo album, following the same path as its predecessor. Preceded by just two months by the EP Threshold Of Faith, which already hinted from a distance at a crisis of ideas, the young Australian musician's fifth album – The Centre Cannot Hold – arrives under less than rosy auspices and repeats the flaws of AURORA: that brand of electronics saturated with pompous effects that seem to communicate nothing beyond the presence of sounds that exist only for themselves, chaotic and cold, with no real communicative margin. Frost introduces the album talking about "chromatic saturation" or "attempts to translate into music a spectrum of deep blue tones", choosing blue as the base colour to start from, referencing the blue of the sea where migrants die in search of a better future. But behind these fine words, almost a political statement, there don't seem to be any significant developments; blue, long the colour of melancholy, here becomes the colour of confusion and of a lack of clear direction.
That said, it's worth highlighting what does work well in this record; in particular "Ionia", with a sound clearly in the style of Boards Of Canada, is among the most significant experiments here, moving from introspective moments to airier ones. "A Sharp Blow In Passing" thrives on constant contrasts that lead to an unexpected, hypnotic finale. The key track is undoubtedly "Threshold Of Faith", accompanied by a striking video that underlines Frost's wish to dig deeper into the music-colour pairing; six minutes of pure neurosis, relentless distortion, sonic saturation skirting the dangerous border between art and unjustified excess. Though the line is just a step away, everything works here, and it's even original compared to the rest of the record.
Elsewhere it's harder to find anything of substance: from the rage-saturated synths of "Entropy In Blue" to the din of noise on "Trauma Theory", from the long drone of "Healthcare" to the whirlwind of "Eurydice's Heel", which even has something of a clone ("All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated"), one gets lost on a road that doesn't seem to lead anywhere clear. Precisely what Frost seems unable to find in recent years, caught in an endless search for the surprise effect, for ever-harsher distortion.

The years following the release of The Centre Cannot Hold (2017) saw Ben Frost mainly busy with collaborations ("Leaving Meaning" by Swans), various TV series soundtracks (Dark, 1899, Fortitude, Raised By Wolves) and documentaries (Broken Spectre).

Scope Neglect immediately stands out as one of the most extreme works by the Australian composer, who has long been fascinated by the fusion of electronic music with electric guitar distortion. In 2024 this union perhaps reaches its definitive form, bringing to full fruition the magnificent harshness of his masterpieces By The Throat and Theory Of Machines.
Recorded together with Greg Kubacki (guitarist of math-core band Car Bomb), Scope Neglect immediately presents itself as a challenge to the listener, with distortion and drones piling up over a continuously devastated electronic substrate. Minimalist repetitions and metal guitar converge on "The River Of Light And Radiation", just as "Chimera" tries to touch on terrain very different from the usual territory of contemporary electronic music.
What prevails is violence, a sonic assault on the listener, but also a taste for storytelling – as when Frost uses the sounds made by sperm whales on "Turning The Prism", once again testifying to his closeness to the ecological themes he had already tackled on Broken Spectre. "Tritium Bath" slows the pace but doesn't ease up on the distortion, by now almost bordering on thrash, maintaining a constant duality between its two souls (electronics and metal guitar), for a work that marks a turning point in Ben Frost's career, born of communicative urgency and a radical desire to turn the page.

With Palestine 36 (Original Score), the soundtrack for the film by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, he changes course once again, delivering his most explicitly political album to date. This time around there's no trace of the usual electronic-industrial arsenal, nor of the violent distortions, but a total immersion in symphonic music, performed by the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, with a successful blend of classical orchestral instruments and traditional Arab and Persian instruments (oud, tabla, maqam, ney) — bearing witness, once again, to how coexistence between different cultures is the only rational path forward.

Ben Frost's conception of symphonic music doesn't seek out strong, memorable themes, but instead unfolds as pure texture, alternating crescendos of tension with static passages, all in service of the film's mission. As the director puts it, "Palestine 36" is a work meant to recover repressed memories, as in a psychoanalytic session. Ben Frost's music tries to become an instrument for this collective psychoanalysis, with long string notes that build a hypnotic trance. There's no theme lending a romantic or heroic air to events — only sonic textures that heighten the tension ("May God Forgive You"), at times wrapped in electronic inserts ("Kareem"), at other times carried by strings that pull the listener into the film's imagery ("Bread Or Bullets").

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google