‘Medieval Path’ by Forever Era | New Album, ‘Forever Era’
Exclusive track premiere of ‘Medieval Path’ by Forever Era, taken from their upcoming album, ‘Forever Era’, out May 13th, 2022 via File 13 Records.
‘Forever Era’ is the debut album by Japanese/American band Forever Era. The band features Yukio Murata (My Way My Love), Justin Sinkovich (Atombombpocketknife) and Adam Reach (The Poison Arrows). ‘Medieval Path’ is the second single taken from the album.
“This track is just Yukio and me”, explains Justin Sinkovich. “I started out with a couple of 808 drum machine patterns edited together in a rough song structure on the left and right channels. Yukio then added more structure, dynamics, and the samples. I went back over it and some dark keyboards and guitars ran through a Big Muff guitar pedal, some delays, tremolos and other effects. All of the sudden this one sounded more like a traditional song than most on the record, so I added one more keyboard that created a minimal vocal melody to follow”.
Justin also adds that ‘Medieval Path’ came from a list of names in his notes: “In the middle of the Covid lockdown, one of my best friends was living in the UK. He would take walks at night on this dark path from hundreds of years ago that we deemed the ‘Medieval Path’. We would talk on the phone for an hour or more about once a week, and often talked about the weight of past relationships. So I tied the concept of this old path in with the impact of love lost. I looked at the lyrics for the song in my notebook just now and found one line, the only line written on the page that never made it into the song. It contextualizes what my friend and I hoped to accomplish by our conversations: “I forgive you and now I forget you”.
When Chicago’s The Poison Arrows postponed their new album and touring in the spring/summer of 2020, guitarist/vocalist Justin Sinkovich (The Poison Arrows, Acquaintances, Atombombpocketknife, Thumbnail) relocated to a house in the woods about 3 hours from Chicago for over a year, and started constructing tracks for a new project. As the project took shape, Justin messaged his long-time friend and File 13 label mate Yukio Murata (My Way My Love, Inoran, The Mortal) in Tokyo to contribute. Yukio dove into every track, quickly becoming a co-producer and member. Adam Reach (The Poison Arrows, Pink Avalanche) had also moved from Chicago to Chapel Hill, NC, and provided foundational sequencers and live drum tracks on several key tracks remotely as well. A couple of songs were quietly revealed on streaming services as the album was completed.
If you are familiar with The Poison Arrows and My Way My Love, imagine these bands deconstructing their framework into a dizzying array of sequencers, drum machines, samplers, synthesizers, and experimentations with their more typical drums, guitars, and vocals providing the final aesthetic layers, all being shared back and forth across time zones.
The debut self-titled LP from ‘Forever Era’ is a unique and frenetic one. The opening track ‘Patterns Per Partition’ starts with a dizzying array of dueling guitars, keyboards, and vocals from both Yukio and Justin on top of a Suicide-inspired sequencer and multiple drum kits from Adam. Track 2 ‘Subject Fell’ follows suit with more of a reliance on the live drum kits and samplers. The record meanders into a more drum machine-driven affair for the remainder of side A. Keyboards drip with space echo and distortion on ‘Bluetooth Séance’ and ‘Medieval Path’ striking a symbiotic between chaos, darkness, and melody to provide a platform for Justin’s swaggered spoken word. And then ‘ADAT Hit’ could almost end up at a retro IDM night, but not quite. Its title references the antiquated Alesis Digital Audio Tape (ADAT) tech that chained recorders that recorded on VHS tapes and were quite prevalent in studios in the 90’s if you can imagine such barbaric technology. From there, side B of the album toggles from more analog elements back to more electronics, and from instrumentals to intermittent vocals.
The production of the album was very fluid as it was transferred from member-to-member usually ignoring traditional practices by ditching the multi-track individual instrument manipulation ability by sending a stereo mix of a track to another member so that they can quickly and easily layer their contribution on top of it as another stereo mix and send it back. This process is something a traditional audio engineer would likely never consider. All together the album is complex to digest but is fun to figure out what the hell is going on and we think it came together quite nicely as a volume of experimentation balancing cohesion and chaos.
Pre-order ‘Forever Era’ here!
Forever Era Official Website / Facebook / Bandcamp
File 13 Records Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
