Originally published in Now Then Magazine Issue 76
BEN FROST
AURORA
MUTE RECORDS
An astonishing piece of work. At first glance, the music feels like confusion and the oncoming surge of panic. Once the concept of what I was hearing had been validated by my sense of music, as this truly is like nothing I’ve encountered before, I found symphonic and musical mastery. With the use of volume as a medium for expression being key to the flow in the progression of these tracks, each individual piece of interlaced music has been composed from the wavelength upwards.
When the music begins, the sensation of something big approaching is genuinely felt alongside the sounds of shrill hums and whines which elegantly drift like razors over a beating heart bass drum. As the crescendo of intention and twisting sonics reaches its maximum, we cut to near silence once again. From this tweaking of mood emerges the triumphant fanfare and peels of bells which begin ‘Nolan’. As the intro calms into something almost tribal, the album begins to form a holistic impression – or, in other words, I begin to get it.
As it continues, everything merges. It’s difficult to distinguish tracks from one another in the same way that the chapters in a book are only sometimes apparent by the marking on the page. But this does not make a boring album. No, it feels like I’m listening to a film. There are truly epic moments and tranquil, nervous ones, and the imagery that the sounds induce is a thrill.
Rowan Blair Colver
BEN FROST
AURORA
MUTE RECORDS
An astonishing piece of work. At first glance, the music feels like confusion and the oncoming surge of panic. Once the concept of what I was hearing had been validated by my sense of music, as this truly is like nothing I’ve encountered before, I found symphonic and musical mastery. With the use of volume as a medium for expression being key to the flow in the progression of these tracks, each individual piece of interlaced music has been composed from the wavelength upwards.
When the music begins, the sensation of something big approaching is genuinely felt alongside the sounds of shrill hums and whines which elegantly drift like razors over a beating heart bass drum. As the crescendo of intention and twisting sonics reaches its maximum, we cut to near silence once again. From this tweaking of mood emerges the triumphant fanfare and peels of bells which begin ‘Nolan’. As the intro calms into something almost tribal, the album begins to form a holistic impression – or, in other words, I begin to get it.
As it continues, everything merges. It’s difficult to distinguish tracks from one another in the same way that the chapters in a book are only sometimes apparent by the marking on the page. But this does not make a boring album. No, it feels like I’m listening to a film. There are truly epic moments and tranquil, nervous ones, and the imagery that the sounds induce is a thrill.
Rowan Blair Colver
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