Ben Frost

Ben Frost is reshaping the landscape of modern music, and you are lucky if you get to experience him doing so.
For anyone who has been following Frost for a while, you'll know that the latest album, _Aurora_, is a move away from his more aggressively ambient works, with more actual beats and structures. Truth be told, it was, until last night, my least favorite piece by him, but it turns out that this is one of those albums that benefits immensely from live performance. It would not be inaccurate to say that I only really understand that album now having experienced it at full organ-massaging levels of volume. And volume there is here, in plenty. The opening act for the night I saw, Comma, put on a solid set, doing the sort of is-it-a-dj-or-a-band cultural collage which I ordinarily like, but, must admit, was just kind of background for anyone like me who is in a show like this for the noise. His set would have been great at a more dance oriented night, but I was here for blood, and in context it came off as sort of anemic. No fault of his, though, just wrong place wrong time.
But then during changeover, I was having a conversation at the bar which was obliterated by a blast of white noise as Frost stalked onto the stage and cranked up something. The static continued as he set up his work, and it slowly began to resolve into a crackling sea of fragmented textures. Then, the bass came, and the rest of the night became a blur.
The light crew at 1015 did an amazing job, somehow maintaining the traditional "only strobes and smoke" of a noise show while actually creating a sense of movement and dynamics throughout the night. My companion and I danced in a haze of abstract rhythms and flailing sensuality. The man to our left stood stock still, arms upraised, the woman to our right nodded serenely. All of these were appropriate responses. Frost's music is so multilayered that it can be approached as noise, or drone, or (if you are sufficiently broad in your tastes) even dance. There is no one right answer, and that is part of his power. He stalked the stage with an intensity that drove the distortion, and the bass pummeled us into a frenzy of movement, or stillness, or simply awe. When the lights came up, we staggered out, and that is literal. I had had half a beer, my companion had had nothing but water, but we had to support each other walking back to our destination, legs moving off on strange angles as though we were both drunk. The show affected us on a deeply neurological level, like a drug, or a punch to the gut, or a religion. It was all of these, on some level, and more. Frost's music combines the visceral power of noise with an intellectual consideration of structure and rhythm, and the results are, quite literally, like nothing I have ever experienced.