Photo: Bandcamp
In 2018 English producer Matthew Barnes - better known as Forest Swords - released his second record Compassion, and when I asked him during an interview why he chose that word, he said that, in a time when more and more people were being displaced, it was one that was going to become more important.
Five years later, his follow-up Bolted is his darkest, most claustrophobic work yet, so much so that even a die-hard fan like myself found it initially off putting. A few listens in though, it becomes apparent that Barnes’ gift for melody is still present amongst the harsh industrial sounds, and his work is still thrilling for the simple fact that no one else on the planet is making music quite like this.
When I spoke to Barnes after his second album, I was slightly taken aback by what a normal, cheerful guy he was. This is music that’s dense and often foreboding, and that extends to the surrounding imagery. The cover art features a sculpture of a figure inside a cage, which was actually made by Barnes. I doubt it's a coincidence that the song we just heard is called ‘Night Sculpture’.
In each track he builds up these percussive assaults, then throws in a big, bold melody as a kind of lifeline. On that song it’s something like a hammered dulcimer; on ‘The Low’ some sort of bell, and disembodied vocal.
It’s hard to find reference points in music so singular, but the first EP Dagger Paths showed a clear dub influence. That holds true here - the last thing on the album is a sample of Lee Scratch Perry - but over the years the reggaefied basslines have become surrounded by angular noise, and eventually disappeared.
Interestingly, ‘The Low’ began as a beat made for Yoko Ono. Elsewhere on the album, Neneh Cherry donates an unreleased acapella.
Barnes made the album in a warehouse factory, while going through what he calls “psychedelic amounts of pain” due to a leg injury. Listening to Bolted it seems clear that both those elements shaped its sound considerably.
Since his second album Barnes has composed music for ballet, film, and video games, and it’s easy to see how he’d be in demand: the mood on these tracks is consistently dour, but it’s undeniably dramatic, and he’s good at switching up instruments to suit each one.
When I spoke to him he was slightly coy about his sound sources, saying his success had allowed him the budget to record more live instruments, but he’d tried not to get carried away. Listen to the orchestral sweep at the close of the song ‘End’, and the line between programming and performance starts to feel blurred.
Bolted is one of my favourite releases this year, but it’s definitely not for everyone. What used to impress me most about Forest Swords was the way he’d construct rhythms without traditional drums sounds, and make them as catchy as the musical elements. That’s still the case here, but now they’re likely to be drenched in distortion.
He uses voices more sparingly, but when he does it’s striking. In our interview he revealed to me that he’d chop up voices to create a melody, then add his own singing voice into the mix. I’ve never heard of anyone else taking this approach. It’s just another example of Matthew Barnes following his own path.
