Forest Swords

The creative vision of producer and visual artist Matthew Barnes manifests in Forest Swords, where propulsive rhythms and introspective atmospheres dissolve distinctions across emotional states, historical periods, and musical categories. Early releases such as the 2010 Dagger Paths EP demonstrated Barnes’ equal debt to post-punk, dub, and hip-hop, yet the project’s scope broadened further with the 2014 debut album Engravings and 2017’s Compassion, both of which folded in jazz, global traditions, and classical elements while adopting a more measured stance. Barnes’ brooding synthesis of archaic and forward-looking textures proved ideally suited to scoring assignments, leading to commissions that ranged from Assassin's Creed: Rogue to the award-winning documentary Ghosts of Sugar Land. The dense, abrasive yet still eerily luminous character of 2023’s Bolted only reinforced Forest Swords’ standing as a singular and consistently unpredictable artistic presence.

During adolescence Barnes created four-track recordings inspired by hip-hop and electronic music as well as by punk and pop acts including Sugababes. He launched Forest Swords in 2009 with the self-released EP Fjree Feather and the cassette singles Miarches and Glory Gongs. The Rattling Cage single and Dagger Paths EP followed in 2010, earning widespread praise and placements on numerous year-end lists. Barnes’ meticulous standards and tinnitus nevertheless slowed the pace of new material. In 2011 he delivered three specially commissioned works for the Abandon Normal Devices Festival, co-wrote and produced How to Dress Well’s 2012 single Cold Nites, and maintained his graphic-design practice.

“Thor’s Stone,” a comparatively streamlined piece that surfaced in June 2013 after nearly three years of silence, previewed the August arrival of Engravings; Barnes mixed the album outdoors, accentuating its open yet enveloping atmosphere and critical favor. Lee “Scratch” Perry supplied a remix of the track that November. Scoring projects occupied much of the ensuing period, encompassing 2014’s Assassin's Creed: Rogue, 2015’s climate-focused La Fête (Est Finie) that also featured contributions from Massive Attack and Young Fathers, 2016’s drone-shot sci-fi short In the Robot Skies, and that same year’s body-inspired dance work Shrine, issued on Barnes’ Dense Truth label. Political upheaval and accelerating digital connectivity shaped the second album, Compassion, which Ninja Tune released in May 2017; the record merged virtual and acoustic instrumentation, was lauded for its genre-defying experiments, and reached number 37 on the U.K. Independent Albums chart. Later that year the sessions yielded the charity pair “Congregate”/“Free,” proceeds from which supported relief efforts in Mexico and Puerto Rico. In 2018 Barnes curated an installment of !K7’s DJ-Kicks series that mapped his influences from post-punk and dub through techno and avant-garde pieces, appending an original track and brief field recordings.

Extended collaborative work followed, including the score for Bassam Tariq’s award-winning 2019 short documentary Ghosts of Sugar Land and the soundtrack to Liam Young’s The Machine Air. In 2020 Barnes co-produced a track for Ellie Goulding’s Brightest Blue and composed music for choreographer Emma Portner’s debut ballet Islands, which opened at the Oslo Opera House. The next year brought the soundtrack for visual artist Thomas Dosal’s Ghost Light exhibition at Aachen’s NAK in Germany and a reunion with Young on the multi-media installation Planet City in Melbourne, Australia. During 2022 he created and performed the score for the video game As Dusk Falls and composed for Melanie Manchot’s first feature film Stephen before commencing Forest Swords’ third album. Captured inside a Liverpool factory while Barnes convalesced from a severe leg injury, the tense, enclosed Bolted appeared in October 2023; it set distorted chromatic percussion against woodwind melodies and vocals that incorporated an unused sample of Neneh Cherry’s voice.