BEN FROST - Palestine 36 (Original Score)

The great revolt of 1936 is a crucial moment in our history, and I don't understand why anyone would choose to begin the narrative of Palestinian resistance with the Nakba. It's impossible to understand what happened during the Nakba without understanding what happened in 1936. That was the first great Palestinian revolt. It involved the whole of Palestine and mobilized the entire population. Of course, there had been revolts before, against the Ottomans or the British, but they never had the same scale

(Annemarie Jacir)

In 2024, Ben Frost caught everyone off guard with the release of “Scope Neglect”, a groundbreaking work that fused electronics and distorted guitar into a bizarre alternative take on metal that nobody had imagined before. Next came the live album “Under Certain Light And Atmospheric” (2025) and the celebratory reissue of his debut, his cosmic masterpiece, “Steelwound (20th Anniversary Edition)”.

With “Palestine 36 (Original Score)”, the soundtrack to the film by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, he changes course once again, delivering his most explicitly political album yet. This time there's no trace of his usual electronic-industrial arsenal or violent distortions, but rather a full 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), showing once again how coexistence between different cultures is the only rational path forward.

Ben Frost's approach to symphonic music doesn't seek strong, memorable themes, but instead unfolds as pure texture, alternating between building tension and static moments, all in service of the film's mission. As the director states, “Palestine 36” is a work meant to recover repressed memories, as in a psychoanalytic session. While fools think and repeat that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7, 2023, and the better-informed trace it back to the Nakba of 1948, Annemarie Jacir turns the clock back twelve more years, to the great Arab revolt of 1936 against the United Kingdom's authorization of Jewish immigration: a crucial event erased from collective memory.

Ben Frost's music tries to become a tool for this collective psychoanalysis, with long string notes creating a hypnotic trance. There's no theme lending a romantic or heroic sense 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 immerse the listener in the film's images (“Bread Or Bullets”).

All proceeds will go to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

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02/05/2026