Album Review: Be Forest – Knocturne

Be Forest
Knocturne
We Were Never Being Boring Collective
★★★★

To walk into Be Forest’s Knocturne is like walking into a journey of the unknown. A foggy daze of magic, this collective conscious of harmonic guitar duality and shimmering vocals sends chills down your back. The mystery of the group’s work is an accentuation of an existential dream we may or may not be living in.

These songs are brilliant. It has been a long time I have been haunted by a collection of songs like these. When you dive into the abyss of “Empty Space,” the dissonance is stark. The distraction turns life into day dreams at night.

On “Segfrido,” the hollowed-out bass lines are cavernous and daring. The song behaves like a distant descendent of Faith-era The Cure. On the song, they conjure up dimly lit ghosts of shoegaze past, expressingly doing the genre justice. The authenticity is mesmerizing and their stark vision on this release is more powerful now.

There is a coldness to the persistency of “Gemini’s” beat. Leave it to the guitar to float with effervescence. Erica Terenzi’s voice following suite. Nicola Lampredi transforms his delicate guitar work into a wall of noise not as stark as My Bloody Valentine but equally as fearful.

Be Forest – Gemini

The dream continues into “Bengala.” It’s our 21st Century Souvlaki. Tribal beats burn in slow motion as this song moves like a ritual of haunting greys and blues. Their cyclic nature is a flowing creature that loops us into perpetual oblivion.

There is beauty in the way Be Forest constructs their dream pop and Knocturne is a reflection pool that ripples into dimensional abstraction. And as this album came from nothing, “You, Nothing” is coffee-stained, red-eye pedal switching that echoes, feedbacks and disappears back into nothing.

Upcoming Tour Dates:

March 8 and 9: New York, NY – The New Colossus Festival
March 11 – 17: Austin, TX – SXSW
March 19: Chicago, IL – The Empty Bottle
March 20: Minneapolis, MN – Kitty Cat Club
March 27: Seattle, WA – Lo Fi Performance Gallery
March 29: Oakland, CA – Starline Social Club
March 30: San Diego, CA – Tower Bar
March 31: Los Angeles, CA – The Echoplex
April 3: New York, NY – Elsewhere