Music com­mu­nity, brace your­selves. Ben Frost is set to occupy best of lists again and gen­er­ate twice the press the critically-lauded The­ory of Machines gar­nered a cou­ple years ago. His third album, the fan­tas­ti­cally com­plex By The Throat does what few albums are able to, some­how take their pop­u­lar pre­de­ces­sor and almost com­pletely erase it from your mem­ory while lis­ten­ing to the fresh mate­r­ial. Com­par­isons are not even apt. Even though he employs gui­tars and noise again, this is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent ani­mal. Opener “Kill­shot” is per­haps the best track, com­bin­ing gen­tle elec­tron­ics, a repeat­ing gui­tar melody, and a fan­tas­ti­cally loop­ing slice of delayed feed­back that cuts off abruptly every mea­sure, it’s the per­fect start to this explo­ration of exper­i­men­tal gui­tar music. “The Carpathi­ans” presents an omi­nous and dev­as­tated land­scape of snarling, howl­ing beasts accom­pa­nied by heavy piano and soar­ing strings. I see the after­math of a mas­sive bat­tle in this song whereas “O God Pro­tect Me,” a wind­ing and pen­sive melody, con­jures the image of a war­rior slowly dying and won­der­ing how the end will come. “Híbakúsja” con­trasts this open­ing salvo of songs with a gor­geous and alto­gether brighter atmos­phere, even with it’s mourn­ful horns and slow per­cus­sion back­ing the light gui­tar work. Sure enough, a mean shock of feed­back and noise phases in to this, rum­bling and shift­ing through­out the track. I’m not entirely sure where the con­nec­tion to the movie is, but the two-part “Peter Venkman” intro­duces careen­ing voices as instru­ments into Frost’s reper­toire, as the glue hold­ing this suite of delay-ridden gui­tar noise together, a tableau of hor­ror if there ever was one, finally cul­mi­nat­ing in a horn lament towards the end. The seven minute “Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes” is cer­tainly Frost at his most beau­ti­ful, push­ing frag­ile gui­tar pluck­ing to the fore­front and let­ting it remain vir­tu­ally untouched for the length of the com­po­si­tion, only let­ting pianos and some light noise grit come in mid-way. The intrigu­ingly titled three-part “Through The Glass Of The Roof/Through The Roof Of Your Mouth/Through The Mouth Of Your Eye” closes out By The Throat with a tril­ogy of chaotic per­cus­sion and gui­tar exper­i­ments. It’s shock­ing how fresh and unique this album is, a truly sin­gu­lar artist at the height of his craft. And that’s say­ing some­thing, given the impres­sion that The­ory of Machines left. Here’s to hop­ing for a long and excit­ing career.
<a href=http://benfrost.bandcamp.com/”>“The Carpathians” (mp3 — free download)

Ben Frost — Live at Unsound 2008