Forest Swords, Photograph via ACMI
Forest Swords performed at ACMI, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, on Saturday 14 June.
It’s virtually forgotten now, but in the early 2010s there existed an electronic music genre, or aesthetic, called nightbus, denoting atmospheric post-dubstep meant for listening on earphones in transit and after hours. In 2013, UK DJ Chris Coco released a cult compilation, -NIGHTBUS, consisting of tracks by underground London artists on his Melodica Recordings.
Burial was the godfather. Mount Kimbie were also associated with the phenomenon, while soulful balladeer James Blake became the big star. Forest Swords (aka Matthew Barnes) carried on the tradition of the mysterious Burial.
A graphic designer, Barnes hails from The Wirral in England’s North West. He generated industry buzz with 2010’s debut EP, Dagger Paths – especially his radical remake of Aaliyah’s “If Your Girl Only Knew.” Signing to the influential (and now defunct) New York label Tri Angle, Barnes followed with an album, Engravings, in 2013.
Forest Swords joined Ninja Tune’s roster for 2017’s Compassion, but over the years, Barnes retreated from the electronic dance scene, establishing his own leftfield record label, Dense Truth. He’s worked as a composer and sound designer in the realms of video games (he scored an Assassin’s Creed trailer), film, contemporary ballet, theatre and visual arts (including a commission for the NGV). He’s also collaborated with Massive Attack.
In 2023, Barnes re-surfaced with his third album as Forest Swords, Bolted. Its lead single, “Butterfly Effect,” sampled a vaulted Neneh Cherry recording. Barnes had previously included Cherry’s “Blank Project” on his DJ-Kicks compilation and remixed “Kong”. The producer conceived the project in a former Liverpool factory as he recovered from a broken foot.
A decade after his last Australian tour, Barnes is staging a “live score” at ACMI as part of the RISING festival. Sonically, Bolted reflects Northern England’s post-industrial decline and the ravages of austerity politics – and Barnes’ live visuals also convey a sense of abandonment.
He reshapes tracks from across his catalogue – including “The Low” off Bolted, 2018’s “Crow” and the Engravings-era “Thor’s Stone” – into an unsettling soundtrack for images of electricity pylons, dystopian apartment blocks and dumped cars reclaimed by nature. Barnes himself casts an eerie shadow on the cinema walls as he plays.
The music spans brutalist industrial rock, windchill ambient and avant-garde broken beat – all hyper-textured and with occasional fragmentary vocals. The gig fleetingly veers towards a ghostly semblance of rave.
These days, the word “immersive” is so ubiquitous as to be banal, but Barnes’ show is absorbing as it poses philosophical questions about our environments and the archaeology of presence. And although he performs for just over an hour in the early evening, it feels like time has been suspended.
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