2014 repress, originally released in 2007. Includes mp3 download. This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's first release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. From the ominous darkness and intensity of its opening moments, one might expect a death metal album to break out in an instant, but Theory Of Machines is an album whose design is as symphonic as it is confrontational -- the tempo doesn't pick up, no hooks or vocals arrive, and when the drums finally kick in, they're as fragmented and corroded as they could possibly be and still resemble a groove. On Theory Of Machines, Ben Frost exploits every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre, the changes in this music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather -- and sometimes as violent. As the music changes it changes only in texture, color and intensity so that the sense is not of something being created, altered or even developed, but of something already present being slowly illuminated.