England’s Forest Swords released his Engravings LP debut in late August, but the excellent album has delivered a new gift. The first sign that the elusive SPIN feature star Matthew Barnes had returned was an early share called “Thor’s Stone,” which came out the gate walking a “very thin line between hip-hop instrumental and left-field rock drone,” tapping into the elemental as it plods through a verdant, earthen soundscape.
That dubwise delight now gets a music video courtesy of director Dave Ma (Foals, Movement, the Horrors), and the treatment similarly combines the organic and the unnatural to entrancing results. Therein, we find Madrid-based dancer Guzman Rosado in the middle of downtown Los Angeles at night. As the music begins, he emerges from a fetal position in fits and starts, born of the song, moving to its strange rhythms. Ma spoke to Nowness about the work: “I made him dance repeatedly for about eight hours through the night. There was no one for miles around, just Forest Swords echoing out of a boom box.”
That sounds like our kind of party. Watch the gorgeously creepy creation above.
