Forest Swords – Fjree Feathers EP review

Forest Swords, and the Dichotomy of Urban and Rural.

The genre of Forest Swords EP Fjree Feathers contains a surprisingly high number of similarities with black coffee: both have vast amounts of depth that require the indulger to focus to appreciate said depth; both make us hyper aware of the sweet things that are missing (the sweet things being sugar and the proverbial sugar of lyrics and concrete structure); and both are acquired tastes that a lot of people will like because it is genuinely enjoyable, but a lot of people will only like because they are pretentious. Unlike coffee though, Forest Swords latest outing won’t keep you up at night. It’s an incredibly ambient, soundtrack-esque work; like Ratatat, but rather than looping the same 2 measures, Mathew Barnes (the solitary musician at the helm of Forest Swords) chooses to expand on the varying parts and slow them down considerably.

The best words to describe the general feel are ‘lush’ and ‘textural. The soundscape is seemingly designed to emulate the dichotomy between urban and rural, with space left for any natural sounds from those environments to just slide right in: wind in the leaves could be a lightly shaken maraca, or the Doppler effect of a passing car could be the attack on a synth. The beginning of the opener “Down Steps” highlights the rural side best, with the first minute and forty seconds evoking images of the late night sea and it’s coast, and the interplay therein. The third-to-last track is the best representation of an urban environment, with industrial-sounding percussive hits and sampled and distorted vocals that sound similar to adan (Muslim call to prayer). Most tracks meander seemingly from nowhere to nowhere, like a child on a playground. But, also like a child on a playground, both have reasoning behind what they do; it’s just hidden from the audience.

If you ever need thinking music reminiscent of This Will Destroy You, but with less punch, or you decide to make a very in-depth movie on the life of a caterpillar and need something chill to set as the score, Forest Swords is the choice for you. However, casual music listeners will probably be turned off by the seeming blandness, or turned on by the potential hipster points of having such an obscure and atypical music project at their disposal.