Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
-W.B. Yeats
Seems like only yesterday we were confidently telling you about how Australia’s most fearlessly experimental sculptor of sound (and facial hair) Ben “Yep, Ben Frost” Frost was surprise-releasing his apocalyptic new EP Threshold of Faith, on which he and Chicago’s favorite not-a-producer, Steve “Not-A-Producer” Albini, proceeded to spend two mad weeks slashing at speaker cones, assaulting amplifiers, overloading vacuum tubes, and violently tearing a handful of high-octane compositions out of Frost’s swimming head and searing them onto magnetic tape.
I don’t know about you guys, but I figured that was pretty much the end of the experiment and that a worn-out Frost and Albini had arrived at some sort of…nirvana-like catharsis.
NOPE.
Frost is COMING BACK already, with the announcement of The Centre Cannot Hold, a new, full-length album of similarly-visceral sound design process experiments recorded “over ten days by Steve Albini in Chicago.” Due September 29 on Mute, this new 10-track attack on reason and composure “exists not in space, but in a space; it is a document of an event, of a room, and of the composer within it. It is music that is not fully controlled and appears to be anxiously, often violently competing against its creator.” It also (obviously) represents “an attempt at transcribing a spectrum of glowing ultramarine into sound.”
But that’s not all. Along with the album announcement, Frost has also announced a fall your (starting September 25 in Essen, Germany and culminating in an appearance at Utrecht, Netherlands’s Le Guess Who Festival) and unleashed a new full-on video for the EP and LP’s opening salvo “Threshold Of Faith.” The hauntingly luminous and inscrutable visual aid (watchable down below) is the result of a “collaboration shot in the winter of 2016 in Reykjavík, Iceland with conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten.”
Keep a cagey eye out for pre-orders, and check out the minimalist and very appropriately-cerulean cover art and full album tracklisting right after the video clip. Then,
after that? Prepare ye for the End of fucking Days before it’s too late.
Things fall apart, readers. THINGS FALL APART.
The Centre Cannot Hold tracklisting:
01. Threshold Of Faith
02. A Sharp Blow In Passing
03. Trauma Theory
04. A Single Hellfire Missile Costs $100,000
05. Eurydice’s Heel
06. Meg Ryan Eyez
07. Ionia
08. Healthcare
09. All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated
10. Entropy In Blue
Ben Frost’s widening gyres:
09.25.17 - Essen, Germany - Maschinenhaus / Zeche Carl
09.29.17 - Brussels, Belgium - Bozar
10.04.17 - Paris, France - Le Trianon Biennale Nemo Paris
10.05.17 - London, England - Electric Brixton
10.06.17 - Berlin, Germany - Funkhaus
10.08.17 - Madrid, Spain - La Riviera
10.18.17 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Amsterdam Dance Event, Muziekgebouw
10.21.17 - Prague, Czech Republic - Lunchmeat Festival
10.28.17 - Manchester, England - Transformer 2 Festival
11.03.17 - Turin, Italy - Club2Club Festival
11.11.17 - Utrecht, Netherlands - Le Guess Who Festival
More about: Ben Frost
