SÓLARIS by Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason
Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason are two composers used to shrugging off the distinction between experimental sound-art and deeply felt melodies. Frost’s vast, blackened post-industrial works often crystallize in moments of quiet beauty before disintegrating in pure visceral noise; Bjarnason’s orchestral music marries brutal modernism to classical aesthetics one moment and soaring ethereal harmonies the next. And yet here, on the tail of two widely acclaimed releases; Bjarnason’s PROCESSIONS and Frost’s BY THE THROAT, we are given something altogether new. A unique collaboration, SÓLARIS is a quiet, stilled and all consuming symphonic suite at once as affecting and uncanny as the science- fiction classic that inspired it.
The power of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris is not in its futuristic sets, or in the hypnotic shots of the alien planet’s weird, fluid surface, but it’s in the way he juxtaposes his alien, futuristic elements against the intimately familiar. This is a future not just of flashing lights and video screens, but of wood and wool and leather, of dogs and horses, books and photographs. In Frost & Bjarnason’s SÓLARIS we do find the futuristic, gaseous atmospheres and pulses one might expect from a sci-fi soundtrack. Yet here they are carved instead from the warm, fragile sonorities of a string orchestra -Poland’s Sinfonietta Cracovia- a gently prepared piano whose harmonies warp and melt before transforming again—and waves upon waves of guitar.
Created through a unique series of processes, Frost & Bjarnason’s initial sketches —improvised to the film— were fed through software designed to correct music which tried to turn their dense and distorted sonic input into a digital sequence of raw musical data. Working from data riddled with error and misunderstanding, a human score was orchestrated; the whole process deftly mirroring the core of the film’s own narrative of memory and loss, alien doppelgängers and emotional feedback loops. Brian Eno —who consulted closely in the creation of SÓLARIS— also used the same film to create a video accompaniment to this music in another strange loop of computer-generated distortion.
But here the score stands on its own. SÓLARIS; a journey into an internal world, into the self, a flux of wonder, horror, sorrow and tenderness, and a ravishing sensory experience.
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“Slow but spellbinding...exploration of tonal and textural ambience.” – Halcyon
“A sparse, deeply moving piece.” – Filter Magazine
Tracklist
| 1. | We Don't Need Other Worlds, We Need Mirrors | 2:11 |
| 2. | Simulacra I | 5:35 |
| 3. | Simulacra II | 7:37 |
| 4. | Snow | 1:01 |
| 5. | Reyja | 5:05 |
| 6. | Cruel Miracles | 3:50 |
| 7. | Hydrogen Sulfide | 2:12 |
| 8. | Unbreakable Silence | 3:37 |
| 9. | You Mean More To Me Than Any Scientific Truth | 2:39 |
| 10. | Saccades | 6:01 |
| 11. | Venia | 6:25 |
Credits
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Written by Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason
Arranged and Conducted by Daníel Bjarnason
Performed by Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason with Sinfonietta Cracovia
Produced By Valgeir Sigurðsson & Ben Frost
Recorded by Daniel Rejmer & Valgeir Sigurðsson at Alvernia Studios, Alwernia, Poland
Assisted by Piotr Witkowski & Krzysztof Bielewicz
Alvernia Studios Managed by Łukasz Poniński
Additional Programming, Software Manipulation & Air Support by Paul Corley
Live sound by Daniel Rejmer
Additional Recording by Paul Evans at Greenhouse Studios, Reykjavík Iceland
Assisted by Clément Lemennicier, Jérémy Joseph Vachet & Luke Howard
Greenhouse Studios Managed by Sturla Mio Þórisson
Mixed and Mastered by Valgeir Sigurðsson at Greenhouse Studios, Reykjavík Iceland
Vinyl Mastering by Lupo, at Dubplates, Berlin
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Sinfonietta Cracovia
Robert Kabara - orchestra leader
Maciej Lulek
Małgorzata Szuba-Kmiecik
Marcin Kmiecik
Aleksandra Honcel
Katarzyna Blajda
Marcin Hałat
Izabela Szlachta-Dowgiałło
Piotr Marciak
Robert Milewski
Danuta Brandys
Justyna Duda-Krane
Danuta Augustyn
Lilianna Adamska
Stanisław Słowiński
Ewa Szczepańska-Chwast
Aneta Dumanowska
Ryszard Sneka
Rafał Daszkiewicz
Żanna Laszkiewicz
Jan Tomala
Tomasz Wyroba
Alina Dorożyńska
Marcin Mączyński
Jan Kalinowski
Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska
Piotr Bylica
Michał Skiba
Grzegorz Klimczak
Jakub Strycharz
Ryszard Haba
Tomasz Sobaniec
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Cover photographed by Börkur Sigþórsson
Gaffer Ásgrimur Guðbjartsson
Styling Ellen Loftsdóttir
Make up Steinunn Þórðardóttir
Art department Heimir Sverrisson
Artwork by Brian Eno and Nick Robertson
Assisted by Anastasia Afonina
Design and Layout by Frosti Gnarr
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SÓLARIS
A concept by Mat Schulz
Commissioned and Produced by Mat Schulz and Gosia Plysa for Unsound Festival / Fundacja Tone, Krakow, Poland
Assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body
Made possible with the support of "I, CULTURE" - The International Cultural Programe of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council, Co-ordinated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland - and S.T.E.F, Iceland
Thankyou
Mat Schulz and Gosia Plysa, Niamh Burke-Neff, Rafał Nowicki and all at Unsound Festival, Chris Woods, Olaf Bohn and all at Ableton, Tim Hecker, Lawrence English, Nicolas Bohnet and all at Rolex, Brian Eno, Nadia Sirota, Jerzy Madeja, Cupcake Corner Krakow, Hildur Maral Hamiðsdóttir, Petter Ekman, Mulla Bing, Andy Rantzen
www.ethermachines.com
www.danielbjarnason.net
www.bedroomcommunity.net
This is a Bedroom Community record
License
All rights reserved.Tags
The music of Ben Frost is about contrast; influenced as much by Classical Minimalism as by Punk Rock and Metal, Frost's throbbing guitar-based textures emerge from nothing and slowly coalesce into huge, forbidding forms that often eschew conventional structures in favor of the inevitable unfoldings of vast mechanical systems.