【コラム】 Ben Frostと音響建築：ノイズと構造のあいだで

Column en 00s Ambient Experimental Noise

11 Oct 2025

Ben Frost and Acoustic Architecture - Frequency Violence

Text: mmr

Theme: Redefining the sublime in the digital age by Ben Frost

When many listeners hear Ben Frost’s music for the first time, the first thing they notice is not volume, but density. It’s not just a loud noise.Sound expands the space itself, compresses it, and exists as if to take away its breath.

For Frost, who is originally from Australia and lives in Iceland, sound is a physical phenomenon and a form of violence. It is constructed as an architectural and tactile experience that goes beyond melody and rhythm.

“Sound is a sculpture of air, a pressure acting on the body,” he says.

The silence of Iceland and the roughness of Australia

His work has a coexistence of Icelandic tranquility and Australian wilderness. In a quiet landscape on the outskirts of Reykjavik, he creates excessive distortion and deep bass.

In collaboration with Bedroom Community’s Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly, It created a tense tension between classical structure and electronic destruction.

2009’s ``By the Throat’’ is a truly symbolic work. Here, sounds growl, breathe, and attack like beasts. Field recordings of wolf howls, breathing sounds, and low-frequency growls. These are not environmental sounds, but are organized as “attacking sounds.”

Sound as a weapon, sound as a ritual

When discussing Frost’s acoustic philosophy, one cannot ignore the perspective of ``weaponizing sound.’’ He uses sub-bass and distortion to precisely design sonic violence.

Through collaboration with Hildur Guðnadóttir, Tim Hecker and others, We explored how sound crosses the boundary between “pain” and “pleasure.”

In his works, the listener’s body becomes a “resonator”. The abdominal cavity, skin, and bones listen, not the ears. Sound surrounds the listener like air pressure that fills a space.

It’s more of a ritual than music. There comes a moment when a series of sounds expands consciousness and transforms reality.

The battlefield of the studio

Ben Frost’s production environment is more like a battlefield than just a recording studio. A plethora of modular synths, modified mics, and over-the-top compressors. Instead of “recording” the sound, you grasp it as if you were punching it.

He doesn’t reject chance, but at the same time says, “Every frequency has a reason for its existence.” Noise and distortion are not useless.

Field-recorded wind sounds and vibrations, When it begins to take on an architectural structure through electronic processing, It turns into Sound Architecture.

Cinematic Turn: Score for Shadows

Since the 2010s, Frost’s activities have expanded into film and drama music. Scores such as **Fortitude**'',Dark’’, and ``Raised by Wolves’’ are Rather than being a sound to incite fear, it functions as a sound that shapes the space of the story itself.

There is almost no melody in his scores. What exists instead is the pressure'' of space and theduration’’ of breathing. Ben Frost acts as a “sound architect” in the video.

The bass that echoes in the darkness is like the heartbeat of the city, It evokes the “memory of silence” that humans have lost in civilization.

Explosion of light: A U R O R A and the criticality of sound

A U R O R A, released in 2014, was a watershed moment in Ben Frost’s career. With this work, he abandoned his previous “acoustic + electronic sound” approach, I built a world almost entirely with electronic sound particles.

The drum set and guitar disappeared, replaced by pulses flashing at the speed of light Fragments of metallic noise depict a cosmic space. Steve Albini’s mix is surprisingly dry; The reverberation of the sound is removed to visualize the “oxygen-free acoustics” that Frost intended.

“A U R O R A” is based on my experience in Congo, Africa. It was inspired by extreme physical conditions such as sunlight, heat, and the instability of electricity. It is the violence of light, the construction of sound by photons.

After this album, his sound became more and more architectural and inorganic. At the same time, it began to pulse like a living organism. A U R O R A can be said to be a work that truly captures the moment when sound becomes light.

Bodies, Machines, and Sacredness

For live performances, Frost keeps lighting to a minimum; Transform the stage into a ritual space of light and noise.

Extreme sound pressure, low frequency undulations, white light. They numb the audience’s senses and turn them into a sacred experience.

The structure resembles a Laibach, a Swans, or even a religious ceremony. “The calm that lies beyond excess”—— Frost finds a kind of relief in that.

The collapse of time and the digital abyss

In recent years, Frost has been using AI composition and real-time processing to He is interested in the “uncontrollable autonomy of sound.”

The sound leaves his hands and changes in a self-generated manner. Tarkovsky and William Gibson-like vision of the future. There is a poetics of decayed technology and reverberation.

Frost’s sound attempts to redefine the sublime in the digital age. It’s like an architect trying to maintain a structure without fear of collapse.

Toward a new acoustic ecosystem

Ultimately, Ben Frost isn’t looking at the boundary between nature and man-made. Rather, it is a ``new ecosystem’’ that will be born in the interim.

Electronic sounds do not imitate nature, but become the language of nature itself. Noise is not destruction, but the voice of the environment.

He says:

“The act of listening is a sense of survival.”

Sound is no longer entertainment or art. It is a ``physiological tool’’ that allows humans to reconnect with the world.

Discography: Works as an acoustic map

Year	Title	Main features	Links
2003	Steel Wound	Experiment with subtle acoustics using delicate environmental sounds and guitar	Amazon
2007	Theory of Machines	Accelerationist fusion of minimal structure and noise	Amazon
2009	By the Throat	Critical point of animal sounds and violent textures	Amazon
2014	A U R O R A	Explosion of light and vibration, first transfer to Warp	Amazon
2017	The Center Cannot Hold	Analog density recorded by Steve Albini	Amazon
2017–2020	Dark: Cycle I–III (OST)	Netflix drama music, building bass and silence	Amazon

Silence left behind

Ben Frost has fallen back into silence in recent years. In a place close to the Arctic Circle, we recorded the sound of ice, the shivering of wind, and the echoes of snow. He is reconsidering the “limits” of sound.

What is sound? What is noise? And is silence really the opposite?

In the end, what Frost shows is not the “silence” at the end of the sound; A new sound lurking in the silence.

“The limit of sound is not noise. It is silence.”

Ben Frost Main Chronology

flowchart TD A2003["2003: Debut with 'Steel Wound' (Room40)"] A2007["2007: Received international acclaim for 'Theory of Machines'"] A2009["2009: By the Throat" released (Bedroom Community)"] A2014["2014: Transferred to Warp Records with 'A U R O R A'"] A2017["2017: Produced 'The Center Cannot Hold' with Steve Albini"] A2017B["2017: Responsible for the score of the Netflix drama "Dark"] A2020["2020: Dark: Cycle III soundtrack announcement"] A2022["2022: Sound installation presented in Iceland"] A2024["2024: Participate in AI sound generation project"] A2003 --> A2007 --> A2009 --> A2014 --> A2017 --> A2017B --> A2020 --> A2022 --> A2024