Culture

Rating: 4/5

In the infancy of the twenty-first century, electronic music is really establishing itself as an unorthodox medium of expression. As the grind and excess of EDM declines in popularity, so grows acclaim for more reserved styles of electronic music. Among these new, more calculated artists are James Blake and Nicolas Jaar, two handsome men in their early twenties who independently make pensive, personal electronica. They incorporate a wide range of sounds, such as dubstep and soul (Blake) and downtempo and jazz (Jaar), rendering the terms “organic” and “eclectic” viable in a genre of music previously dismissed for its artificiality. Mostly written and recorded alone on their laptops, their music has a distinct intimacy to it, as if – while you’re listening to it – you and he are the only people in the world.

With the release of his impressive debut Engravings, Matthew Barnes (a.k.a. Forest Swords) is very much set to join Blake and Jaar in the vanguard of this style of music. Forest Swords embraces the slow swells of dub and the gossamer beauty of post-rock, creating a distinctive sound sure to be widely imitated in the next couple of years. Instead of employing lush production like many electronic artists, Barnes favours a paler, more washed-out feel to his music. This lack of punch and definition may sound unappealing on paper, but in practice it is half of Engravings’ burnt-out beauty.

The songs themselves on Engravings aren’t exactly mind-blowing from a songwriting standpoint, often latching onto a sighing groove or melody early on in the track and riding it for the duration. But, as with Barnes’ contemporaries, it is more often the mood conjured by the song that makes an impression than the complexity of the song itself, and each song here evokes a different emotional hue. While Engravings is comprised of similarly lonely echoes and waterlogged samples, each song manages to have a distinct flavour.

The trembling opener “Ljoss,” with its swarms of guitar notes, distinguishes itself as a highlight, as does the bleak Western soundscape of penultimate track “The Plumes.” The only song here that fails to deliver is “Gathering,” a jerky call-and-response amalgamation of vocal samples that sounds like Kanye West’s “Power” left out in the rain. Its latter half does feature some lovely reverbed piano, but it’s too little, too late; I doubt I’ll be alone in skipping past this track. But it’s one disappointing track out of 10, and does little to sully Engravings as a whole.

In a musical landscape swamped by bedroom producers and indie musicians, Forest Swords and his excellent full-lengthdebut stand out. Engravings is a beautiful journey of blanched, dreamy electronica that is well worth a listen. With any luck, this is only the beginning.