A Minor Forest

In 1992 the math-rock trio A Minor Forest came together in San Francisco, its lineup consisting of guitarist and vocalist Erik Hoversten, bassist John Trevor Benson, and drummer Andee Connors. The group cultivated a noisy, melancholy aesthetic more aligned with midwestern post-rock than with the prevailing punk sensibility of the Bay Area, which made it hard for them to attract a local audience. An eventual chance to document their work on a full-length arrived from the Chicago imprint Thrill Jockey. Steve Albini recorded the resulting debut album, Flemish Altruism (Constituent Parts 1993-1996), which received considerable critical attention. After issuing a handful of singles and scattered compilation contributions, the band delivered Inindependence two years afterward. Their final concert occurred on November 1, 1998, at the Great American Music Hall in their hometown, and a year later the posthumous rarities set ...So They Were in Some Sort of Fight? surfaced on My Pal God. Hoversten carried forward his parallel project the Threnody Ensemble, while Benson and Connors later reconvened in Ticwar.