Forests 森林 are Jon, Kuo Kuo, and Zun Long. When the band started out, they took irresistibly catchy guitar pop and threw it down a flight of stairs. But slowly, subtly, they pushed rhythm to the forefront, steady one moment, spiraling into polyrhythmic solos the next. Bass lines lurk in the back of your ears, sounding almost like tuned percussion. Crashing waves of electronic noise mask a booming voice. In a bar on a dark street where people are doing bad things, Forests are what they should be listening to, but probably aren’t. What makes Forests so special is that they never ask “How can we sound like this other band?” but instead, “What would happen if the drums sounded like hacking bones? What would happen if we got rid of the guitar and built everything again?”
