Ben Frost
Theory of Machines
Bedroom Community 2006
01. Theory of Machines
02. Stomp
03. We Love You Michael Gira
04. ...Coda
05. Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water
First, in the seconds when "Theory of Machines" begins to emerge into sound, what it brings to mind isn't any instrument, but an environment. The distant resonances are a little like the end of that old Alvin Lucier tape experiment, "I Am Sitting in a Room", in which the re-re-re-recorded sounds of the composer's stuttering voice are gradually obliterated by the sympathetic vibrations of the acoustic in which he's speaking - but here we begin with all resonance, all acoustics, and only eventually do we hear something that sounds like an instrument being played by human hands.
Frost is a master of landscape. He "creates space" acoustically and formally, but he is as well a creator of what can only be described as imaginary geographical spaces, through the breadth and depth of these pieces. Their scale is enormous, exploiting every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre over the course of nearly ten minutes each, recalling the unbounded enormity of the natural world. The changes in the music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather - and sometimes as violent.
This is Ben Frost's "Theory of Machines": that music can be expressive without melody, without drama, without adornment of any kind; with only the simple, slow, inexorable progress of an elaborate formal mechanism.
Frost is a master of landscape. He "creates space" acoustically and formally, but he is as well a creator of what can only be described as imaginary geographical spaces, through the breadth and depth of these pieces. Their scale is enormous, exploiting every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre over the course of nearly ten minutes each, recalling the unbounded enormity of the natural world. The changes in the music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather - and sometimes as violent.
This is Ben Frost's "Theory of Machines": that music can be expressive without melody, without drama, without adornment of any kind; with only the simple, slow, inexorable progress of an elaborate formal mechanism.
Oh yes yes yes. This definitely hit the spot. Read the rest of Ben Frost's liner notes and give a warm welcome to Bedroom Community from Iceland!
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1 comment:
The title track is fantastic. Incurably Optimistic! ftw.
many thanks
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