“I never consider what I do to be expressionistic music.”

Catching Ben Frost in the states is a tricky thing to do. The Australian native, who recently made his home in Iceland, has spent the year touring with Nico Muhly and Sam Amidon across Europe and scoring arrangements for Australian dance companies. When not on the road, Frost could be found holed up in the esteemed Greenhouse Recording Studio in Reykjavic recording his 2009 masterpiece By The Throat. So, when word got out that Ben Frost would be in New Jersey to premiere a dance piece at BAM a couple weeks ago, we jumped at the chance to interview him. During the course of the conversation, we shared thoughts on the return to composing pieces on the piano and double bass, his roots as a classically trained musician, and the interplay between hyper-accesible means of artistic production and painstakingly crafted works of art.

Inyourspeakers: By The Throat has a collaborative nature to it. You were located in Iceland but your collaborators are from around the world. How did that happen? Did they travel to Iceland or did you compose via other means?

Ben Frost: I am lucky in the sense that a lot of people I do collaborate with come by me in other contexts due to my relation to the studio I share with Valgeir (Sigurosson) in Iceland. We do a lot of stuff there and a lot of people come through, there is definitely an element of people coming by me in that way. Having said that, with musicians like Lawrence English, I very much went out of my way to make things work.

Another thing is, my records generally take a very long time to make. So over that period I have lots of opportunities…It’s not the type of situation where I make a record in the space of a two week recording session or something that I book in advance, it is more like a cumulative process over a long period of time. It is a common interest, all of it.

IYS: So when did the impetus for By The Throat begin?

BF: When Theory of Machines was finished I felt a real need to go back to go back to sitting at the piano and playing from a more acoustic framework. “Theory of Machines” was pretty guitar oriented and more digital. I felt a pull back towards darker and warmer textures.

IYS: Is that how you composed most of your songs. Sitting at the piano?

BF: For this record, yeah. Definitely. That is where most of it began. On the other hand, Theory of Machines was mostly guitar oriented.

IYS: The choice to add the digital element, through the use of noise and other electronic manipulation, was that more of an afterthought or did that just evolve throughout the recording process?

BF: It is all interconnected. The majority of the record was made in just a few years space. I like to work in an environment…The classic studio is where you have the instruments in one room and the recording equipment in the other. I don’t work like that. I like to be in a space where everything interacts with each other. The computer right next to the piano…Everything is just in one big space. I prefer to work in an open plan environment, as opposed to a separated space. Inevitably, through that process you see the lines get blurred, you know?

IYS: So, By The Throat has a sort of apocalyptic vibe to it. But, at the same time, alongside those harsh noise elements and low-end electronic manipulation lies a very beautiful, classically-composed backbone. What was going through your mind as you recorded this?

BF: For me, ultimately, the record was about extremes. The classical backbone that you talked about is kind of the inherent point in all of it. My music, for better or worse, at it’s barest elements, it is something I can play on the piano. It is something that can be replicated in a sort of simplified, Michael Nyman sort of a way. I guess because of that, because I am rooted in those ideas of harmony and melody and rhythm, I feel that my music can withstand a lot and still manage to convey a more emotional idea that is beyond the aesthetics of it. Because of that I feel like there is more room to play with it without alienating the inherent musicality of it.

IYS: Interestingly enough, that is something that I have always been able to place my finger on in your two most recent records. There is always an underlying element that remains readily accessible and recognizable…

BF: I never consider what I do to be expressionistic music. I never feel and I never claim to be inventing some kind of new form of music. I am the first to admit that my music is firmly rooted in a sort of classical mode of composition. It is rooted in basic musical principles, and that is the kind of music I am drawn to. I am not interested in sounds for sounds sake. I am not interested in design for design sake. The content is what I am ultimately concerned with. The aesthetics of my records are important, but there has to be a certain sense of depth for a given recording to include my namesake.

IYS: That kind of makes me think about the problems of post-modernism. People like Pablo Picasso were very, very aware of the rules they were breaking.

BF: Exactly! That is my biggest problem with post-modernist thought, and moreover, particularly this sort of art school mentality where these fucking hipsters claiming to be artists and abstracting something…the simple fact is, the object that you ask them to abstract, if you ask them to render it realistically they would be incapable of doing so. You are not breaking rules because you never followed them in the first place.

IYS: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more.

BF: I think musically it is true as well. There is this element in experimental, noise, and electronic music that anyone can be a musician. You can fundamentally side step everything that came before you and just move straight to whatever experimental music is... It is a short cut, really. I am not interested in the short cut. It shouldn’t be easy.

IYS: No. I am glad someone else shares this thought with me, because it seems like this is a cross-disciplinary malaise that has set in. Everything is so readily accessible, and simple to produce. I think it has bred a culture whose sole aim is output instead of laborious study. As an experimental and noise fan, even though some would beg to differ, you can definitely tell the difference. You can tell the difference between masturbatory output that has no root in anything and then classically trained experiments in form in genre.

Anyway, I digress. You moved to Iceland how many years ago?

BF: Nearly five years ago now.

IYS: What prompted the move from Australia to Iceland? They seem like two totally different worlds.

BF: The simple answer is I like it there. Ultimately, I think people do their best work when they are happy. I think there is this fashionable short cut in post-modern music that to be an artist means you have to be inherently miserable. That was certainly the case for me before I moved away. I think my work is better for it. I do my best work when I have space around me and it is quiet and I am surrounded by people who I feel connection. That happened to be on the other side of the world.

IYS: You record primarily at the Greenhouse Studios with Valgeir Sigurossen, correct?

BF: Yeah. I have my studio there. That is where 90% of my work is done.

IYS: And certainly with Nico Muhly and Sam Amidon of Bedroom Communities. I saw on the their website that you guys were doing a tour together? A whaling boat tour? Could you tell me a little bit about that?

BF: Once a year we all meet up at the Iceland Airwaves festival. The event is one of those rare opportunities where we are able to revisit our collaborations live. It is always a great experience, and it made sense to transpose our performance to a tour of sorts. That’s where the idea of the whale watching tour came to be. We did the first leg last month.

IYS: Where was the tour?

BF: Mostly southern Europe, up through Germany and Denmark.

IYS: Do you have any plans on coming stateside any time soon?

BF: I hope so, like next year would be awesome. I still need to tour the states on my own accord. I still haven’t really played here.

IYS: I am calling out of Salt Lake City, I am not sure if that is on your musical roadmap. But if you ever want to come here…

BF: Well, if someone wants to bring me there I would not say no.

IYS: I will do my best! My last question about the album deals with the cover art and the photos you offered online alongside the release. They really fit the mood and atmosphere of the album. Can you tell me the story behind that photo session? Is that just an everyday occurrence in Iceland?

BF: Ha ha, no. My work is rooted in a visual art practice. I went to art school, which is where I really learned how to put ideas together, to make collections of work and to channel my energy into something substantial. I guess in that sense, the training really affected the way the photo shoot came together.

I am a collector of ideas, and I prefer to dwell on things. I feel a great affinity for the surrealist movement in that it is concerned with collection and adoration of objects, the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas. When I started making By The Throat, just as I was drawn back towards acoustic instruments like the piano and the double bass, I also felt a huge draw towards certain colors and images as well. One of those images involved fire and blinding lights, nocturnal things, animals (particularly wolves), teeth, fur and bones. Very rapidly, in the same way I was collecting ideas musically, my room was covered with images and ideas and text and my random bullshit madness scrawled on post-it notes everywhere.

Like I said before, my music is not expressionistic; it is firmly rooted in real ideas that are very recognizable. I feel that over time all these images that I collected began to coalesce and form these relationships to each other. When it came time for the cover, the ideas sort-of put themselves together in a space with wolves, the night and blinding light. Months and months of research went into where this was going to happen. It just turned up that in the North of Iceland in the middle of the night was where it needed to happen.