Low Forest: Entrovert / Ambivector

Strap yourself in. This is the story of the band that never met and yet somehow played live shows. The band who recorded not one but two debut albums - one which is a space-post-stoner-doom rock voyage and the other an ambient noise-drone experience. The band who would then like you to listen to both these albums simultaneously, at once and at the same time. This is the story (so far) of Low Forest.

So let’s deal with these points as we find them - Low Forest is centred round Josh King, but the back cover of these CDs simply states written and performed by Josh King, Brad Schumacher and Halston Rossi (along with a crew of helpers). It/they were recorded remotely between 2022 and 2023 without the trio ever meeting face to face, but since then King has formed a live band who, among other shows, have opened for Pallbearer.

The space-post-stoner-doom rock album is called Entrovert and as a listening experience is exactly what that describes. Slow, steady, deep, involved, heavy and yet still somehow floating in the ether. Whereas the ambient-drone album is called Ambivector and as a listening experience is swooshing, chiming, atmospheric background music. In fairness, it’s the former that Low Forest seemed to suggest as the focal-point release back in 2023 when this project came to fruition - and as a stand-alone listening adventure that makes sense. The vocals are low in the mix and yet somehow beguiling, whereas the interaction between the differing elements makes for a heady mix, but in all honesty, as you traverse the musical landscape laid out, it’s easy to lose focus.

However, bring Ambivector into play - now, even though I have both CDs here, and more than 1 CD player in my house, the easiest way for me to synch these albums up was to hit play on the CD player with Entrovert in it, wait a few seconds and then hit play on Ambivector on bandcamp. Cleverly, the opening tracks - “Sun Worshipper� and “Sun Warship� respectively, contain a countdown that’s relevant to the music and the concept but which also helped with a couple of minuscule pauses of the CD to brings things into alignment. In truth, it was much easier than I anticipated. Suddenly, what I thought was a gimmick made two linked but separate albums become something that standing alone neither could be. The swirling, swooping near nothingness of Ambivector fills in obvious (and now clearly intentional) gaps within Entrovert that hadn’t been apparent before and the pay off is an involved, progressive (in the correct terms) ‘album’ that really feels like a three dimensional journey. Personally I also found the different aural feel between my two listening devices to add new aspects to the likes of “Qu’est (Ce QueTu As Fait)� and “Jovian Nectar�, or “The Compromise� and “Twelfth Thesis� as they weaved in and out of one another.

The themes on this album are human, real and important - idealism, love, isolation, resilience and acceptance - and yet, this side of things is conveyed through a space opera concept where the main album seems to find a species (possibly human) landing on an alien planet and encountering the natives of that world, whereas the ‘side-album’ views this ‘invasion’ from the other point of view. Together these conjoined releases take you through the trials, tribulations and hopeful triumph of the encounter. Add in fabulous artwork on both CDs and this really is quite the ambitious, but remarkably well realised endeavour. And there’s more, for example, Ambivector features real recordings of radio waves from the sun and all the planets (including Pluto!).

How often I’ll take the time to synch this journey up I’m not 100% sure, but it really is worth the effort and Low Forest deserve to be congratulated for excellently pulling off what initially felt like utter, self important, folly.

Track Listing
Entrovert
1. Sun Worshipper
2. A Curious Circle Of Gold Embers
3. The Colony
4. Don’t Be Alarmed
5. The Pleides
6. Qu’est (Ce QueTu As Fait)
7. The First One To Stop
8. The Compromise
9. Bogdanovist
10. Fire For The Night
11. Smaller Triumphs

Ambivector
1. Sun Warship
2. Why Came You Between Us?
3. Cloudwalker
4. Crescent Earth
5. Dust Spectre
6. Jovian Nectar
7. Catasteroid
8. Twelfth Thesis
9. Cascading Recombinant Chaos
10. Ice For The Day
11. Symbolic Interactions

Added: November 26th 2024
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Low Forest @ bandcamp
Hits: 233
Language: english

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