Monolith Cocktail Blog

MIKEY MCDONALD SITS DOWN WITH THE FACE BEHIND THE FOREST SWORDS NOM DE PLUME, MATTHEW BARNES

In today’s exclusive interview on The Monolith Cocktail, Mikey McDonald sits down with one of UK’s most talented electronic musicians Matthew Barnes AKA Forest Swords. Barnes hails from Liverpool and has been releasing music under the Forest Swords moniker for over a decade.

They discuss the recent release of his third studio album titled Bolted as well as what the artist has been up to and future plans.

MM. Hi Matthew. Thanks for taking the time to chat, I really appreciate it. First thing is first, congrats on the new album. A mere six years have passed since your last full-length release. Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about what you’ve been up to in this time?

FS. Mostly concentrating on scoring work. I was lucky to be asked to do a bunch of different stuff across video games, dance and art installations over the past few years and it took up a lot of my time, so it didn’t feel right to try and balance it with starting an album. I’ve learned to listen to those sorts of gut instincts over time.

MM. Obviously Bolted has already received a lot of critical acclaim. Is that something you pay attention to, critic reviews?

FS. I don’t read any reviews, the most I’ll see is maybe just one-line quotes that get put on a press release or whatever. I see some feedback on things like my social media profile but it’s not something I want to be glued to. It’s really bad for anyone’s mental health to be checking in so much with that sort of thing, and I learned pretty early on that it wasn’t good or productive for me to engage with it. I’m really happy and grateful if people connect with anything I make though.

MM. From what I gather you’ve set up your own studio now in a former munitions (military weapons) factory in Liverpool. It was quite interesting to read that as part of your creative process you were visualising what oil spilling might sound like and became interested in things like metal and steel. These are very physical, inanimate things which we wouldn’t normally associate with sound. Working in a space with such history, did that inspiration come about naturally or did you have a particular vision before setting foot in the studio?

FS. I went to a Factory Records exhibition when one of the lockdowns lifted and I decided I really wanted some sort of warehouse or factory space, just to see what kind of things I could cook up in it, and because there’s still a few of these spaces left in Liverpool and they haven’t been gentrified out yet, unlike other cities. It was only really once I got in the space that the feel of the building and the architecture of it started to seep into the sounds I was making and the visual world I was trying to make.

MM. A lot was made about the fact Engravings was mixed outdoors and the impact this had on the record. Engravings has a woodlands feel to it and just listening you can practically hear the tracks leaching out of the soil…I guess the word I’m looking for here is organic. How did the mixing process go this time round? Do you find yourself constantly chopping and changing things in striving for perfection, or is that just it – can striving for perfection be a dangerous thing?

FS. I think like most creative things you just get a sense of when to stop. There’s a point with music, in particular, when you can tinker with something for so long that it loses all sense of excitement, and you also personally lose all objectivity over it. I’ve made enough tracks that I know when that point is before it falls over a cliff, so I’m fairly self-disciplined at stopping. Bolted I mostly mixed while I was going along, so it came out fairly fully formed at the end.

MM. I’m curious as to how you arrived at the album title?

FS. The studio space has these big metal doors I had to unlock every day with deadbolts. It became a sort of visual representation for me of creating the album, and sums up a lot of the sound world on the record too. I was struggling with a broken limb and other stuff while I was making it too so the idea of calling it ‘Bolted’, as in someone running away from something, became kind of bleakly absurd to me.

MM. Did you bother running any of the new tracks through your old four-track tape recorder, just for that extra bit of warmth and texture?

FS. Lots of it went through tape, most of the beats on it. A lot of the rhythms are quite heavy and came back through really blown out. Many of the synth sounds were put through it as well, and even mid-song I’ll switch between the digital version and tape version of a melody or beat. It’s a really hands on and easy way for me to get some texture and artefacts without running it through digital plugins.

MM. Let’s talk about one of my favourite cuts Line Gone Cold. The progression on this one is wild. I don’t know why but I feel like I’m being consumed by a blazing fire when listening to this, then we’re hit with some signature Forest Swords vocal passages. The strings are also a nice surprise, sort of devastating. On this track you sample the late Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, almost a full decade on after he remixed the otherworldly Thor’s Stone. Was this a case of returning the favour? Cool to think his legacy will live on in your music.

FS. Lee and I had always circled each other but I never met him in person. He was very gracious to do that Thor’s Stone remix and I knew I really wanted him on this record. I’d had this voice note from him for a while and it just seemed to fit right at the end of Line Gone Cold, which was always going to be the last on the track-listing because it felt like quite a finite song somehow. As soon as I put him on there it felt like it immediately crystallised into something more powerful and he kind of completed it for me.

MM. Probably a question you get a lot, but I must ask, what is your desert island synth?

FS. It’s not really a synth but I would want the Electron Octatrack. It’s so unique, frustrating and I also couldn’t live without it.

MM. Any releases you’ve been digging from this past year, electronic or otherwise?

FS. I like Holy Tongue who do dubby live jams, and I’ve rediscovered Seefeel from the 90s who are one of the only bands right now that soothe my brain when I’m feeling frazzled.

MM. Churches or power plants?

FS. A church inside a power plant, ideally.

MM. You’ve been doing this for a while now whilst dabbling in some scoring and side projects. What does the future look like for Forest Swords?

FS. I’ve got a couple of scoring things lined up for this spring and then I’m also chipping away at a new album that will appear at some point. Bolted was personally quite a difficult time for me and so I want to make a record while I’m in a good place. I’m just keen to keep learning and making work in whatever form that comes in.

MM. Well, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks again for chatting and all the very best for the next album and in the future!

Keep up-to-date with Forest Swords releases via the official website.

Or visit the bandcamp page.