Discography

Forêt Endormie | Le désespoir utopique

“...spellbinding, mesmerizing, heaven-sent...”
- (Machine Music)

"...able to sound mournful and benevolent at the same time..." (Distorted Sound Magazine)

"...a wistful and complex meditation on human displacement..." (The Sound Projector)

Conceptually, Le désespoir utopique came out of the idea of how some people relocate because they're privileged, and others because they are forced to; some can't move because of lack of privilege and others are able to stay put because of privilege (myself included in this last group). I was thinking about the Expulsion of the Acadians, the US evacuation of Afghanistan, folks seeking asylum in Maine, Grapes of Wrath, and how a lot of my own family has left and some of us have stayed. The resulting lyrics are both intensely personal and attempt to examine universal human themes - grief, family, childhood - but they are not commentary about specific historical or current events.

Musically, my primary goal is always to evoke emotion from the listener. On this album, I worked to expand the group's stylistic boundaries with explorations of early European classical music (Renaissance and earlier), "continuous music" (Lubomyr Melnyk), and avant-garde jazz (Alice Coltrane), while incorporating more electronic/synthesized elements drawn from trip-hop and ambient. The resulting music on this album only hints at the aforementioned influences, blending them into our gloomy intersection of neoclassical and folk.