Matthew Barnes aka Forest Swords has shared two singles from his upcoming album Compassion, which will be released on May 5th via Ninja Tune.
The video for the single, “Arms Out,” is directed by Sam Weihl, and has been described as “a ceremonial passing of power and a celebration of the eyebrow.”
Said Barnes of “Highest Flood,” the most recently shared single: “It’s a challenge to navigate the world we’re living in now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways we need to forge new paths in language, communication and our connection with the natural world – it’s becoming more and more important to try and steer these in a positive direction. The Highest Flood’ distills some of the frustration and hope that I’ve been working through over the past 18 months whilst making new material.”
He is set to embark on a host of projects during the year to come, collaborating with dance, film, performance and music. Previous Forest Swords projects include devising and scoring contemporary dance piece ‘Shrine’, composing for the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ video game, collaborating with Massive Attack on their new music, and scoring the first movie made entirely with drones – ‘In The Robot Skies’ – which debuted at the BFI London Film Festival.
Tracklist:
1. War It
2. The Highest Flood
3. Panic
4. Exalter
5. Border Margin Barrier
6. Arms Out
7. Vandalism
8. Sjurvival
9. Raw Language
10. Knife Edge
Watch “Arms Out” the first single from Forest Sword’s Compassion: