Browse by Artist: FROST, BEN

Artist:	FROST, BEN
Title:	Theory of Machines
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 002CD

This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's first release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. From the ominous darkness and intensity of its opening moments, one might expect a death metal album to break out in an instant, but Theory of Machines is an album whose design is as symphonic as it is confrontational -- the tempo doesn't pick up, no hooks or vocals arrive, and when the drums finally kick in, they're as fragmented and corroded as they could possibly be and still resemble a groove. On Theory of Machines, Ben Frost exploits every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre, the changes in this music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather -- and sometimes as violent. As the music changes it changes only in texture, color and intensity so that the sense is not of something being created, altered or even developed, but of something already present being slowly illuminated. At 26, he has already released such critically-lauded works as 2003's guitar exploration LP, Steel Wound on the Room40 Label, which Pitchfork Media marked as "...an exemplary ambient experience," and the harrowing, self-titled 2005 opus School of Emotional Engineering, which Db Magazine called "...an atmospheric masterpiece."

Artist:	FROST, BEN
Title:	Theory of Machines
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 002LP

Limited edition vinyl version, first-time pressing. This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's first release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. From the ominous darkness and intensity of its opening moments, one might expect a death metal album to break out in an instant, but Theory of Machines is an album whose design is as symphonic as it is confrontational -- the tempo doesn't pick up, no hooks or vocals arrive, and when the drums finally kick in, they're as fragmented and corroded as they could possibly be and still resemble a groove. On Theory of Machines, Ben Frost exploits every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre, the changes in this music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather -- and sometimes as violent. As the music changes it changes only in texture, color and intensity so that the sense is not of something being created, altered or even developed, but of something already present being slowly illuminated.

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