Bleep

Forest Swords’ debut full length Engravings is still a singular record which resists useful comparison and plays beautifully by its own rules. Originally on the Brooklyn-based Tri Angle it's now available again as an expanded repress for the first time on the artist’s own label Dense Truth. Reportedly mixed outdoors on a laptop in the Wirral countryside the artist calls home, the album is shot through with the sounds of natural noise and interference, lending expansive guitars and earthy hip-hop beats an environmental quality.

Lead track ‘The Weight of Gold’ is pushed on by a nagging guitar twiddle which summons up the ghost of Ennico Morricone, while the community vocals sampled on ‘Gathering’ once again prompt a sense of some abstract narrative occurring in an imaginary collision between the English countryside and the Wild West.

The distant sliding pan pipes on ‘Thor’s Stone’ and ‘Irby’s Tremor’ give a depth to Barnes’ productions, while the beats throughout are constructed from drum skins which sound more like household pots and pans than 808 machines. On ‘Anneka’s Battle’, the album makes its closest link with the sound many listeners will associate with Tri Angle, as crisp finger clicks and an R&B-tinged vocal recall the likes of Holy Other, but all in all this is a singular record which resists useful comparison and plays beautifully by its own rules.