Forest Swords

The project of producer/visual artist Matthew Barnes, Forest Swords' intense beats and pensive moods blur the lines between moods and eras as well as genres. The project's early work, such as 2010's Dagger Paths EP, revealed that Barnes' music was as indebted to post-punk as it was to dub and hip-hop, but Forest Swords' horizons continued to expand on 2014's debut album Engravings and 2017's Compassion, which incorporated jazz, global, and classical music along with a more restrained approach. Barnes' somber fusion of the ancient and futuristic lent itself to scoring and sound...