On Scope Neglect, Ben Frost extends his guitar obsession by re-engineering our perception of metal music. Danny Turner finds out more
Australian-Icelandic sound designer and producer Ben Frost arrived on the music scene in relatively subdued fashion with the ambient glisten of his guitar-oriented LP Steel Wound in 2003. However, it wasn’t long before his fascination with black metal began to blister and crackle through visceral, ear-churning albums such as Theory of Machines and the suitably titled By the Throat. Widening his palette via increasing use of electronics on subsequent releases, Frost instinctively ventured into the world of sound design for TV, theatre and video games.
Yet despite Frost’s dalliances into soundtrack creation, his attraction to guitar has never wavered. Following a conversation with Mute boss Daniel Miller, he fell upon the idea of recontextualising familiar tropes from the metal genre and enlisted guitarist Greg Kubacki from progressive metal band Car Bomb to help realise his vision. Frost’s latest album, Scope Neglect, is as captivating as it is groundbreaking, recalibrating our understanding of metal music via a vapour trail of remorseless, grinding riffs and decaying particles of sound.
Around five years into your career, you worked with Brian Eno. How did that come about?
“It was part of a mentorship programme sponsored by Rolex. I received an email about it at some point, which felt very suspicious at the time [laughs], but it turned out I’d been nominated by some committee as a potential candidate and very quickly accepted. The next thing I knew I was in London meeting Brian for the first time. I was obviously a fan, curious to meet him and we spent the day talking for hours. The one thing that connected us was a general curiosity for the world and how systems operate and interconnect. The game theory of the universe and how that influence shapes the creative process that lies at the heart of what he’s about and I see a lot of that in myself. To be honest, I’m not sure that Brian is a huge fan of my music, but there’s a resonance in terms of how music and art works and why we respond to some things and are left cold by others.”
In similar terms, what did you learn from working with producer Steve Albini on your previous album, The Centre Cannot Hold?
“You can’t be in a space for an extended period of time with someone like Steve and not learn or come out of that changed in some way. I’d played myself into a space where I wanted subjectivity in my work while still requiring a sense of objectivity, so I came round to the idea that it would be great to have somebody else behind the glass. Steve was inevitably behind a lot of the music that was very important to me, so I reached out and he was up for it. As a recording engineer, he’s the equivalent of a war photograp
