photo credit: Topper Komm
Today Ben Frost has shared a new track “Black Thread, ᠤᠯᠠᠭᠠᠨᠪᠠᠭᠠᠲᠤᠷ”, the latest from his forthcoming 7-track release, Under Certain Light and Atmospheric Conditions, out on May 16, 2025 via Mute.
Under Certain Light and Atmospheric Conditions is built upon two years of live shows, soundcheck improvisations and field recordings. It is a 38-minute dreamspace of jetlag, melatonin supplements, roaring crowds and failing technology.
Listen to “Black Thread, ᠤᠯᠠᠭᠠᠨᠪᠠᠭᠠᠲᠤᠷ,” a mesmerizing piece with roots in a live performance in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in 2024 HERE.
The album approaches live performance as both an ephemeral event and an archival construct mediated through the predatory veil of DSP servers, where “live” is simply another hashtag aesthetic in an ecosystem of fake music and fake news. Documenting stage extracts from locations including Havana, Naarm, and Kyiv, these artifacts exist somewhere between memory and simulation, capturing not just a singular reality but multiple.
The Scope Neglect tour finds Frost joined by Greg Kubacki of Car Bomb (who also features prominently on the album) and sound designer Carlos Boix, whose recordings of the past year of live performances Frost has seamlessly woven into the album. The tour, which recently presented a blistering performance at EartH in London, continues with a show in Uzbekistan in May. Full details below.
Three of the tracks,”Tritium Bath”, “Chimera” and “Turning The Prism” come directly from Scope Neglect, while the remaining cuts “‘Permcat”, “Trancelines”, “Black Thread”, and “Prism Inversion” (with their roots in Ukraine, India, Mongolia and Brazil) are previously unreleased.
Throughout 2024’s acclaimed album, Scope Neglect, there are touches of metal, sitting alongside crackling electronics, field recordings, breathing animals and deeply contemplative explorations, resulting in something impossible to pigeonhole.
The presence of Greg Kubacki’s guitars, which unfold in sequences that smoulder relentlessly over time, echo the tape loop fantasies of Terry Riley. Through this meditative focus, frenetic logic gives way to an almost transcendental calm.
Scope Neglect is a deliberate opposition in terms, 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.
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, Raised By Wolves, Fortitude and the cult series Dark. His opera creations, including The Wasp Factory for London's Royal Opera House and The Murder of Halit Yozgat at the Hannover Staatsoper, have cemented his position in the world of contemporary music and live arts.
Recent exhibitions for Broken Spectre, his latest collaboration with Richard Mosse, have run at London's 180 Studios, Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria, SFMOMA, Photo Elysée, The Momentary Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2023, and New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Two solo installation works A Predatory Chord and Among The Petals have been staged in the past two years.
BEN FROST LIVE DATES:
5/29/2025 - 5/31/2025 - Muynak, Stihia Festival (UZ)
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