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LP
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HVALUR 025LP
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Limited 2022 restock. Following the CD release of Ben Frost's The Wasp Factory in December of 2016 (HVALUR 025CD), a limited edition transparent vinyl version is presented here. In advance of new music from Ben Frost in 2017, Bedroom Community present the definitive recorded version of his 2013 opera and directorial stage debut, The Wasp Factory, based on the novel by the late Iain Banks. Setting his unwitting characters against the backdrop of vast, implacable forces of nature -- storm, sea, fire, and even their own madness -- Frost reaches deep into his formidable arsenal to reveal an unexpected warmth, from the composer of electronic experiments like Aurora (2014) and Theory Of Machines (HVALUR 002CD/LP, 2006). The focus here is on the live sound of the Reykjavík Sinfonia, recorded in Abbey Road's Studio II and, for the first time, the human voice. He sets David Pountney's libretto to tuneful, even soulful vocal lines; an extraordinarily unreliable narrator describing scenes of extreme violence and horror in music of incongruous loveliness. Limited edition transparent vinyl comes in an edition of 1000.
"One of his boldest projects thus far, Frost's score and concept for the opera is both ambitious and grand in its design. The writing is often sparse and wide, yet simultaneously focused and intense. Frank, the protagonist, is infamously cast as an ensemble of three women who give voice to his dissociated internal monologues." --Drowned In Sound
"The Australia-born, Iceland-based Frost is popularly known for his electro-acoustic hybrids of classical music and heavy metal. He combines post-minimal finesse with modernist severity and Wagnerian daring, charging into the deepest abysses of quiet and storming up the fieriest peaks of noise. Though the focus is now live sound and the human voice, The Wasp Factory should still resonate with fans of his ambient music. It's By The Throat (HVALUR 006CD/LP, 2009) inverted, foregrounding classical and recessing electronics, with no entropy in Frost's signature blend of concussive brawn, delicate tissue, and intricate logic." --Pitchfork
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CD
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HVALUR 025CD
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The Wasp Factory is the very first opera from Bedroom Community's Ben Frost and it is an adaptation of the Iain Banks novel (1984). It was first premiered at Austria's Bregenz Festival and finished up in London's Royal Opera House. This is the first time the audio has been released. Frank is no ordinary boy. The sardonic, misogynistic antihero of Ben Frost's first opera, The Wasp Factory - libretto by David Poutney - is a young psychopath, a sort of mad scientist manipulating human beings like insects in a depraved behavioral experiment. Born and raised off the grid on an isolated island and warped by brutal trauma, he recounts, in a series of monologues, the obsessive rituals, up to and including dispassionate human sacrifice, with which he attempts to find the balance and order hidden in the seeming chaos of an indifferent universe. The Wasp Factory is the title of a miniature maze into which Frank feeds actual wasps as a form of divination, the method of each insect's demise - fire, poison, drowning - standing as a portent of the future. It is also an emblem of his own maze-like mind: a living, buzzing machine and a labyrinthine deathtrap. The opera itself is a kind of ritual, unfolding with the same coldly indifferent and clockwork inevitability as Frank's machinations. However, the materials Frost works with here are perhaps warmer than one might expect from the composer of electronic experiments like Aurora (2014) and Theory Of Machines (HVALUR 002CD/LP, 2006). Now the focus is on the "live" sounds of a small string ensemble and, for the first time, the human voice and over the repeating, tessellating musical cells of that string accompaniment he sets Poutney's text to tuneful, even soulful vocal lines, an extraordinarily unreliable narrator describing scenes of extreme violence and horror in music of incongruous loveliness.
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LP
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RMV 403LP
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2015 repress. Room40 presents the vinyl edition of this classic Ben Frost album from 2007. Since his earliest days, Ben Frost has been fascinated by the cinematic qualities of the guitar. His output to this point has hinted at this, but with Steel Wound, he makes a bold statement of intent. Finding his way to a deserted stretch of Johanna Beach along the Great Ocean Road (Victoria, Australia) in early 2003, Frost set up a remote studio at a derelict cabin overlooking the icy waters of Bass Strait. With a constant wind flowing off the sea his only companion, Frost started work on a series of improvisations that would eventually become Steel Wound. A few months go by and Frost has made his way back to civilization. He begins editing the masses of treated guitar from the Johanna Beach improvisations and before long a theme takes hold -- one that very much reflects the isolation of the environment where the tracks were created. Each of the pieces on Steel Wound is an epic journey, colored with a deep sense of filmic narrative and suggested dialogues. The textural quality of the works, laced with field recordings and lost vocal fragments, sketches out the emotional soundscapes Frost had unwittingly gathered during his time at Johanna Beach. Each piece is a splintered fragment in time -- a forgotten memory beautifully rediscovered in a moment of introspection. Vinyl cut by Lupo at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Second Edition of 500 copies, comes in a gorgeous matte cello-glazed sleeve.
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LP
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HVALUR 006LP
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2014 repress, LP version. This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's second release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. By The Throat is blood red and cloaked in shadow. Produced in Iceland by Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurðsson (Björk, CocoRosie, Bonnie "Prince" Billy), this album features performances by Amiina of Sigur Rós fame, Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metal outfit Crowpath and composer Nico Muhly. Aside from the purely musical language of harmony and melody, there's the level of musique concrète, the weaving of nonmusical sounds into the musical fabric. Borgar Magnason's menacing double bass growls pure bestial noise throughout and the brass choirs of "Peter Venkman" are recorded so closely that they almost transform into pure human breath. And just as these voices slide away from "notes" and "harmony" to become concrete sound-images, the meanings of these images rattle around and collide into each other, forming a whole language all its own. With spot varnish lettering on the front and back covers and a full-color insert, the packaging of this LP looks and feels enormously better than actual human social interaction.
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CD
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HVALUR 006CD
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This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's second release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. Frost first took the spotlight and smashed it to pieces in 2007 with his breathtaking and critically acclaimed release Theory of Machines, which Boomkat called "the future of electronic music" and The Wire called "simply awesome -- Arvo Pärt as arranged by Trent Reznor." It's impossible to truly classify where he is coming from musically, but it would be safe to say his fans would also have records from Neurosis, Tim Hecker, Sunn O))) and Fennesz in their collection. To simply call him an experimental electronic musician, however, does him no justice whatsoever. Where Theory of Machines came sterilized in fluorescent light, By The Throat is blood red and cloaked in shadow. Produced in Iceland by Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurðsson (Björk, Coco Rosie, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy), By The Throat features performances by Amiina of Sigur Rós fame, Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metal outfit Crowpath and composer Nico Muhly. Aside from the purely musical language of harmony and melody -- like Amiina's strings on "Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes," there's the level of musique concrète, the weaving of nonmusical sounds into the musical fabric. We hear the snarling of wolves and the groaning of lions in "Killshot," the microscopic clicking and whirring of hunting killer whales in "Through The Roof Of Your Mouth" and the unmistakable sound of a human gasping for breath in "Híbakúsja." Then there's the sheer physical experience, the literally visceral effect of Frost's seismic rhythms and high-pitched shrieks on your body. These extra-harmonic elements are not just effects to punctuate the musical narrative in By The Throat, but are integral, unifying motifs. Borgar Magnason's menacing double bass growls pure bestial noise throughout By The Throat and the brass choirs of "Peter Venkman" are recorded so closely that they almost transform into pure human breath. And just as these voices slide away from "notes" and "harmony" to become concrete sound-images, the meanings of these images rattle around and collide into each other, forming a whole language of gasping and howling, gut-punching bass, and snarling metal. Using this language, Frost tells a story we can't quite articulate, but which we can feel, profoundly and unmistakably.
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LP
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HVALUR 002LP
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2014 repress, originally released in 2007. Includes mp3 download. 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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CD
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HVALUR 002CD
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2007 release; new midline pricing. 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."
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