"I'm far too self-involved to be adversely affected by the weather, or by a landscape," Ben Frost says in reference to how living in Iceland has - or has not - influenced his music. "That said," he continues, "it's my home - I think its a great place to live and a very nice place to make music. But moving from one side of the world to the other has demonstrated that the idea that Sigur Rós, and by that measure all Icelandic music, is a product of the glaciers and volcanoes is just utter rubbish."

Frost, instead, attributes the unique and distinctive music that exports from this island nation to something a lot less grandiose - a neighborhood of close quarters.

"If there is anything that colors the sound of Icelandic music," he explains, "it's the simple fact that the population is so infinitesimally small that the same people are in ten different bands and all share instruments, and houses."

One of those Icelandic people just happens to be musician/producer/engineer extraordinaire Valgeir Sigurðsson, who collaborates with Frost in addition to such other notable Icelandic artists as Bjork and múm as well as non-Icelandic talents like the Kronos Quartet and Maps. The musical partnership between Frost and Sigurðsson is a strong one that began early in Frost's career.

"Valgeir is the sounding board for everything I do,"Frost says, "we work very well together and have done since the day we met. The most recent time we worked together was on the Draumalandið soundtrack. The collaborations between Valgeir and Nico (Muhly), for example, are much more hands on, but with Valgeir and myself it generally tends to be more objective, much more about appraisal than construction. He had an ear on my new album the whole way along, always sticking his head in the door to make sure I wasn't messing it up."

That new album, By the Throat, features other guests, too, from The Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara (who contributes drum work) to multi-instrumentalist quartet Amiina to aforementioned composer Nico Muhly. By the Throat is already being acclaimed as a challenging listen that encompasses everything from spiky ambient sounds to chugging heavy metal. But the early reviews and instrumentals might just belie the album's content, as Frost claims that the chorus in the album's first song is "pretty much the most romantic thing I have ever written" - and Frost's two fave musical picks of the moment are a little more on the chill side, too. "My favorite instrument at the moment is a recording of a breathing snow leopard," he says, "and my dream collaborator - that would be Kate Bush."

In addition to the new album, Frost recently completed work with Australian dance troupe Chunky Move on the techno-dance performance show Mortal Engine, which melds music, light, and dance into a spacey metamorphosis; after much work and much preparation, Mortal Engine is set to debut this winter in New York.

"Mortal Engine does its thing in New York at BAM on December 9th, running through to the 12th I believe," Frost confirms, "that a seriously messed up piece. I still cant believe it actually works, let alone touring around! It's pretty well the most amazing thing I have ever seen."