Ben Frost "The Centre Cannot Hold (Mute)"
I learned a thing or two in reading Mute’s PR for Ben Frost’s new LP The Centre Cannot Hold. The first thing is: the legendary Steve Albini recorded it. That’s the kind of thing I can wrap my mind around pretty easily. Less easy for my feeble brain is the second thing I learned: This album is “an attempt at transcribing a spectrum of glowing ultramarine into sound.” I could have had all day to list words I would use to describe this album, and I never would have gotten anywhere close to “blue.” I would have said things like “adventurous, anxious and harmonious, distant, hypnotic, lovely.” Sure, this is a collection of opposing words, but I would say that this is an album of contradictions. Like if Fripp/Eno decided to make as beautiful an album as they could while Aphex Twin tried to defrag it the whole time. Check out the haunting first single, “Threshold Of Faith.”