San Francisco Music Blog

Bjarni Grφmsson

​If your creepy dreams don't have the best soundtracks, perhaps you should fall asleep with Ben Frost on your stereo. The Icelandic composer makes eerie, minimalist soundtracks for suspenseful escapades, making excellent use of the tension a string section can evoke in a song.

Frost's new album, The Throat, is only a few weeks old and well worth checking out. Here he's collaborated with Icelandic string quartet Amiina, The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara, Swedish metalheads Crowpath, and composer Nico Muhly.

On "The Carpathians," Frost has crafted a track that could easily be used in the old John Carpenter classic The Thing: wild hounds howl and snarl, the threat in their voices building on an electronically-enhanced bed of sprawling synths and strings.