October 16, 2009

Album review: Ben Frost - 'By The Throat'

A startling record that will have you in its grip

8 / 10 Ben Frost has swapped southern hemisphere for northern, leaving his Melbourne birthplace to set up his noise machines amid the hissing grey rocks of Iceland. This sense of displacement can be heard on these 11 transportative, multi-instrumental pieces that evoke a natural landscape recovering after some future mechanised apocalypse. The soothing drones of a new dawn in ‘Híbakúsja’ give way to abrasive industrial sounds still echoing across the wilderness. ‘The Carpathians’ is a blizzard nightmare of foreboding piano chords and samples of an approaching wolf pack. It’s a hollow, unforgiving, brutal yet utterly beautiful record, full of deep intricacies that won’t let you go. ‘By The Throat’ indeed.

Luke Turner

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