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Music

"I'm Interested in Constructing Realities": Ben Frost In Conversation With Lower Spectrum

Two musicians reflect on creative self-sabotage and the importance of upping the stakes.
Photo: Börkur Sigthorsson

Back in 2003 I first heard Ben Frost's Steel Wound. His sonic world captured and sparked my curiosity despite assaulting all my senses. Harsh, grating and thunderous, I became aware of the way particular sounds are made and manipulated. He has remained a true influence in my approach to exploring sound, and feeds my hope for the future of music. Frost's work is prolific across creative mediums. He has produced for the likes of Colin Stetson, Tim Hecker, Swans and Nico Muhly, has a long list of composing credits for theatre, film, dance and opera and has just released his 5th solo full-length album, A U R O R A. He kindly set aside time to consider some questions I posed to him.

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THUMP: The blueprint for A U R O R A was predominantly written in Eastern DR Congo where you were collaborating with Robert Mosse on what became The Enclave. Heading into the Congo with a field recorder did you feel at the time that your experiences would ultimately evolve into an album?
Ben Frost: I move in cycles, maybe everyone does, but I'm pretty sensitive to that pattern at this point. I think after the last album it took another 18 months, maybe even two years, for that focal point of interest to go away. Richard's work spoke to me at a very crucial moment in that process, and it was in a weird way a visualisation of a kind of music I had been festering on, and that I wanted to make, that needed to be made. From there, our friendship and collaboration became this feedback loop of ideas from which both The Enclave and A U R O R A were born.

After the release of By The Throat (2009) you revealed a project session for the song "Killshot" online. It was a rare and welcome insight to your technical methods. Was your approach to recording A U R O R A quite different?
Maybe the easiest, and at the same time hardest way to get away from old modes of working are to deny yourself access to the tools that allow them - and releasing that Ableton pack was the beginning of that - I figured that by letting those 'secrets' out of the bag it meant that I couldn't use them anymore. It was a cathartic moment - setting fire to everything. Beyond that I denied myself access to the guitar, and to the piano… severe and yet very simple, maybe not even that big a deal from the outside, but it felt like cutting my arms off at the time, and it forged a new line of enquiry for me. If nothing else I deliberately set out to make things difficult for myself and I am proud of that.

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Collaborations feature heavily in your work. Greg Fox (formerly of Liturgy, now Guardian Alien), Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3) and Thor Harris (Swans, Shearwater) all contributed to A U R O R A. Communicating ideas in musical terms can be difficult. Do you have a set idea of what you want from your collaborators or is it a more organic process?
Getting other people involved in my work is not just about the instrument they're playing, not just about the parts that I have written for them – if I've written any – it's actually about characters. With Greg, for example, there's a spirituality in what he does, and similarly with Shahzad, where they're both willing to give themselves over to music and to an experience that often involves intense repetition or physical exhaustion. I wrote to that. That sort of trance-like aspect of performance is inherent in what they do, and also with Thor. Endurance and failure were big themes in this record, and this shaped the way I worked before they even stepped into the studio.

In 2013 I was lucky to be in London for In The Mind of Igor, a contemporary dance production by the Akram Khan Company. The synergy between movement, costume, lighting and sound design was deeply impressive. Do elements of the work you do for film/theatre/dance sneak their way into your albums or do you prefer to keep these worlds separate?
I am learning over the years to separate my work from the work of others. I'll take people's money when they want me to do something, and I'll do my best, and I'll pick projects that interest me. But commissioned work is not the answer and that's not what drives me forward. Similarly, I don't think just making records will ever be enough for me. You know, which is the strong appeal of working on something like The Wasp Factory, working with the physical space, working with people, working with bodies and light, not answerable to anyone but myself.

Photo: Börkur Sigthorsson 
 
In a world increasingly choked with superficial, throw­away music, what is it that keeps you composing?
I'm interested in constructing realities, and they can exist in stereo or they can exist on a stage or in the middle of a room surrounded by an audience. if you'd asked me five years ago I would have told you, yes, I just want to make albums, probably because that idea was still daunting and thrilling. Then if you'd asked me five years before that I'd have probably said something different. Now, I don't know. I think I owe it to myself to keep making things harder, and that is probably where the growing scale in my work comes from. With each step I acclimate, and it gets easier for me to move and so I need to keep upping the stakes. I'm really honestly not happy unless everything feels like it could go terribly wrong, unless I have to fight and feel out of my depth, I don't want to be comfortable.

Ben Frost plays the Hi-Fi in Melbourne on Thursday 5th February and will be performing as part of PBS' Drive Live on 2nd February. His latest EP Variant is out now via Mute/Create Control.

Lower Spectrum's Traces EP is available via Bandcamp