My guest on Line noise this week is the Australian-Icelandic musician, composer, record producer, sound designer and director, Ben Frost. His excellent new album Scope Neglect is released in March and we spoke about that, about making shit music - and why he won't do it - Kurt Cobain’s poetry, silence, Metallica’s Black Album and - because I obviously couldn’t resist - about Dark. Photo by Topper Komm.

Line Noise Episode 155 (Ben Frost 2024)

"I often myself being responsible for a film's music, but also fighting for its absence." The composer discusses movie scoring, his love of opera and his new album, Scope Neglect, on Mute Records.

The multidisciplinary Australian artist Ben Frost might best be known for his score work: he's soundtracked Netflix shows like Dark and its spinoff 1899, as well as a number of major motion pictures and video games. While his formal studies were in visual art, he started experimenting with music-making from an early age, homing in on a unique sound that is truly a melange of his influences in punk, black metal, classical and modern minimalism. His unique approach to composition has led him to some extreme places to capture field recordings, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Amazon rainforest and the empty hulls of fishing boats docked on the banks of Icelandic port towns. Artists like Steve Albini, Björk, Brian Eno and the band SWANS have tapped Frost to work with them, and he's performed extensively as a solo performer and as part of an A/V outfit at the world's biggest festivals and art world circuits. 

In this episode of the RA Exchange, he sits down with senior producer Chloe Lula to discuss his latest venture, a full-length album, Scope Neglect, on Mute. It pulls heavily from his proclivity for guitar music and metal, but still nods to the cinematic minimalism that has become one of his work's primary tropes. Frost dissects some of the recording techniques he used to make the record—he borrowed from the methods used by Mark Hollis of the band Talk Talk—as well as his studio practice, his love of opera and his approach to writing scores. Listen to the episode in full.

EX.702 Ben Frost

This month’s episode welcomes Reykjavik based Australian producer, composer, and sound artist @BenFrost. Early albums like Theory of Machines, By The Throat, and Solaris established Ben Frost as a frontrunner in conceptual, boundary-pushing, and sometimes aggressive electronic music — echoed in his earth shaking live performances, which themselves are celebrations of spine tingling bass frequencies and volume. 

Not for the faint of heart, his music is inspired by punk rock guitar, minimalism, and in the case of his most recent album, heavy metal, often eschewing storytelling altogether in favour of a visceral, physical musical experience. And yet, his work in film and TV scoring, dance, and even opera suggests he’s still interested in narrative artwork. 


In this conversation, Ben and I explore the different facets of storytelling, or lack thereof, as a musician, his new album Scope Neglect, and his approach to composition across these decidedly different fields.


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Music:

"Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead" - Ben Frost (2024)
"Chimera" - Ben Frost (2024)
"Ich Dachte, Ich Haette Mehr Zeit" - Ben Frost, from the Netflix series Dark (2019)
"The Burning World" - Ben Frost (2022)

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AIR 065 / Ben Frost

A podcast about electronic music by Ben Cardew. Formerly home to Braqueberry and Philip Sherburne. Picking at the threads of electronic music. Now available on Radio Primavera Sound (primaverasound.com/en/radio). We also have a Substack: https://linenoise.substack.com/

AIR is an interview podcast series with a different theme each episode. 

Created in 2017, AIR aims to be something different in the wide world of music journalism. Tired of the usual promotional fluff, host Emma Robertson invites artists, DJs, and musicians to get deep on one topic that inspires them — everything from nature, to film, to spirituality — in the hope that it inspires you, too.

The weekly RA Exchange is a series of conversations with artists, labels and promoters shaping the electronic music landscape.

New tracks tagged #Scope Neglect