In the great big world of music, there is the mainstream and then there are many tributaries that either feed into or flow from said mainstream. The mainstream is always where the money is, but the tributaries are often the home for all sorts of curious alternatives with Forever Era’s self-titled album taking up residence a fair distance downstream.
Naturally, there is nothing that might be classed as conventional in this album with brutal beats providing the primitive motive power for these songs and, often chopped short and looped in with short samples of distorted synthetic and organic sounds, this kinetic force soon leads your ears into what might best be described as a maelstrom of discordance.
From the tribalistic rants underpinning “Patterns Per Partition” through the imprisoned 8 bit retro sounds of “Bluetooth Séance” to the minimalist mantra that drives “Will Rise”, Forever Era give us something of a sampled tribute to the early days of electro littered with Alan Vega style markers and underpinned with a determined desire to avoid being compared in any way whatsoever to Mozart.
In case you are wondering, Justin Sinkovich, Yukio Murata and Adam Reach are the names in the frame behind this album and it is their journey from the back streets to the arthouse that is captured in these songs. I won’t say this album is for everyone – because it isn’t – but those who enjoy browsing the darker corners in the history of urban music will find much that is familiar here.
Available from Bandcamp and other digital places.