Bleep

Fresh from collaborations with Swans and a string of high profile soundtracks, among them the instant cult classic TV series Dark, Ben Frost presents his sixth studio album and first since 2017’s The Centre Cannot Hold. Scope Neglect arrives at a confluence of themes that have gathered momentum over the past few years: the apocalyptic Anthropocene, Frost’s analytical deconstruction of sounds (exercised in field recordings of the Amazon rainforest and Icelandic volcanoes) and his love of metal. The result is an exploded and explosive view of musical identity, separated into its core elements and thrusted into a shifting epic.

Gutted guitar shreds from Greg Kubacki (Car Bomb) and Liam Andrews (MY DISCO/Aicher and recently wielding a giant aluminium bass live in BIG|BRAVE) are disconnected from their usual harrowing and headbanging atmospheres, then met with stabbing drum machines and strobing sonic structures. Frost pushes the signifiers of metal to their limits, cutting through glitching, foggy ambience alongside viscerally stumbling electronics; the vaporised and lacerating ‘Chimera’ connects these themes as prickly synths burst and guitars rev up trancelike neon-lit mists.

Gated stutters and ritualistic drumming claw and growl at each other on ‘The River of Light and Radiation’, distorted and stretched into the oblivion of ‘_1993’. Swarms of synths smoke from an overcharged amp on ‘Turning the Prism’, a sizzling melange of foreboding, while the fluctuating spectral sea of ‘Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead’ leaves with quiet iridescent plumes whispered from its stoic rhythmic plucks.

Ben Frost’s high concept and highly experimental compositions continue to stun with his sixth album Scope Neglect.