Ben Frost

Announces Details of The First Studio Album In 7 Years

BEN FROST ANNOUNCES DETAILS OF HIS FIRST STUDIO ALBUM IN SEVEN YEARS 

SCOPE NEGLECT – OUT ON 1 MARCH VIA MUTE

LISTEN TO ‘THE RIVER OF LIGHT AND RADIATION’

Ben Frost has announced details of his sixth studio album, Scope Neglect, a bold, visceral and innovative musical statement that begins a new chapter in Frost’s already illustrious career. Out on vinyl, CD and digitally via Mute on 1 March 2024, it launches today with a new track, ‘The River of Light and Radiation’.

In the sonic crucible of Ben Frost’s Scope Neglect, music undergoes a metamorphic alchemy. From the album’s opening track, the familiar aural chemistry of metal is immediately untethered, isolated in the vacuum, stripped of its cultural trappings and heavy armoury, and then loaded into a particle accelerator.

Where Scope Neglect leans sonically into metal – fuelled by progressive metal outfit Car Bomb’s guitarist Greg Kubacki and bassist Liam Andrews of fellow Australians My Disco – its true form seems to draw more upon the transcendental reveries of the West Coast minimalists. What at first appears confrontational, and ephemeral, is meditatively and methodically repeated, unfolded over time, revealing crystalline vulnerability.

Frost’s titles weave narratives of cycling, perpetual attempts at ignition, maths, and mythology; ‘The River of Light and Radiation’, ‘Tritium Bath’, ‘Chimera’… The slow burn of ‘Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead’ channels the disorienting work of author W.G Sebald, whose own work often gives the impression of being only the faint, flickering shadow of its actual referent. 

Similarly, this genre-defying music seems to feed on an unseen dark matter. Detached from their native surroundings, guitar shapes roar through negative spaces whose dimension is only revealed through the shadows cast upon them. What remains is the outer scaffolding of structures long since dismantled, and which we can no longer see. What Frost wants us to hear, in other words, is frequently not what he wants us to feel.

Scope Neglect is a deliberate opposition in terms; of a dualistic game of obfuscation and obliteration, a sonic universe stripped to its most elemental core where the mechanics are reconfigured, reengineered, old energies diverted and redirected, scope expanded, contracted, and dissolved.

Available now on limited edition vinyl: https://mute.ffm.to/benfrost-sn-le

Pre-order Scope Neglect: https://mute.ffm.to/benfrost-sn

SCOPE NEGLECT TRACKLISTING

Lamb Shift
Chimera
The River of Light and Radiation
_1993
Turning the Prism
Load up on Guns, Bring your Friends
Tritium Bath
Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead 

Frost’s diverse impact reverberates across film, television, and opera, earning acclaim for his score for Julia Leigh’s Palme d’Or-nominated Sleeping Beauty and scores for TV series such as 1899 – including a collaboration with Eliot Sumner (AKA Vaal) – Raised By Wolves, Fortitude, and the cult series Dark. Additionally, his Opera creations, including The Wasp Factory and The Murder of Halit Yozgat, have been performed at London’s Royal Opera House and Hannover’s Staatsoper, cementing his position in the world of contemporary music and live arts.

Following successful exhibitions for Broken Spectre, his collaboration with Richard Mosse, at London’s 180 Studios, Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria and The Momentary Museum Bentonville, Arkansas in 2023, the New York debut of Broken Spectre has just opened at the Jack Shainman Gallery (continuing until 16 March). Ben Frost’s solo installation Among The Petals, a new commission for The Momentary Museum in Arkansas will run until April, this follows the acclaimed solo installation work A Predatory Chord which Frost presented in Athens in May. Frost’s collaboration with artists Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris to score their Prophecy of Butterflies will also be on view in a neighbouring gallery at The Momentary. 

BEN FROST LIVE 2024

26 Jan – Meet Factory, Prague (CZ)

27/28 Jan – CTM Festival, Berlin (DE)

6 April – Rewire Festival, The Hague (NL)

20 April – Zo Cultural Centre, Catania (IT)

23 April – Fog Festival / Triennale, Milan (IT)

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