Ben Frost + Denis Jones + Druss at Gorilla

With By The Throat, Ben Frost created a snarling whirlwind of a manifesto for all of his future works – a menacing coalescence of dread ambience, texture and pitch black melody that roared in the listeners ears and literally grabbed them by throat into a deep dark cavern of detailed sound design and wanton ferocity. Held in the palm of his hand throughout this defining album, Frost’s subjected his prey to whiplash spikes in volume and intensity in a decidedly cerebral listening experience whose quieter and more glacial parts were still charged with a solemn and ever ready to erupt terror. These juxtapositions between minimalist soundscapes and maximised sonic fury are wholly inclusive of the listener and create a dramatic dialogue between them and the composer – a fact informed by Frost’s work with several theatre companies and dancers in his home of Iceland as well as recently rescoring Tarkovsky’s legendary Solaris. It is these compositional tools that Frost has reinvigorated with his latest record A U R O R A, which will surely come to rest in all the important year end lists for 2014 best records. The album has a far more pronounced beat-driven centre and while menace still stalks the proceedings, the detonations of volume are coloured in a far more euphoric hue and even redemptive in quality. His experimentation with rhythm takes on a primitive edge and is definitely informed by his work with Swans on their magnum opus The Seer. No surprise then that Swans drummer Thor Harris is credited on this release, along with peers in emotively driven power-ambience, Tim Hecker and Lawrence English. There can be no denying that this will easily be one of the loudest shows hosted at Gorilla this year – and with Frost’s masterful and devilish control of sound and dynamics through the venues awesome PA, it’s going to sound near apocalyptic. Support comes from the locally celebrated Denis Jones, whose mercurial songwriting relies deeply on tapestries of sounds, creating a sonic architecture with a vast array of effect pedals, voice and instrumentation that unfurl with near choral quality. Rounding out the bill is Gnod associate Druss, whose shamanic approach to drone work creates undulating seas of synths pulsed with driving electronic rhythms, recontextualising the ritualistic aspects of his main band with a more industrial palette whilst deftly retaining their infectious primal groove.

Fri 14 Nov, Gorilla, 54-56 Whitworth Street West, M1 5WW, Tel: 0871 220 0260, 7pm, £12.50, www.seetickets.com