Forenzics

Realtime Arts have posted a review of Sound Series #15, as part of their look into Sydney’s experimental music scene.  We played this gig back in July at Hardware Gallery, Enmore alongside Textile Audio, Secrets and Toydeath, who were in fine form.  On the night we played with Alex Slater on drums for the second time and Joe Cummins on trumpet as usual.  I feel that we may almost have a regular line up now at long last with these awesome players.  Anyway here’s an excerpt from the review.

Forenzics have been around since 2005 but I hadn’t heard them play. With Matthew Syres on guitar and way too many effects pedals, Dirk Kruithof on lead guitar, Joe Cummins on trumpet and Kaos pad and Alex Slater on drums they play loose yet utterly cohesive improv inflected with jazz, rock, drone and psychedelia. Joe Cummin’s trumpet loops and soaring melodies are a particular highlight creating a smoky, sensual atmosphere and the rhythmic interplay, pushing against the metre with loping rubatos, gives the sound an intriguing elasticity. It occurred to me that music is best when it picks you up and takes you somewhere you didn’t know you wanted to go, and Forenzics did just that.

Gail Priest, Realtime Arts, Issue 104, Aug-Sept 2011

For the full review of the entire gig and also a look at The Now Now’s show from round about the same time, go to Realtime Arts website here.  The images from the gig are taken by Lucien Alperstein, Sound Series’ official photographer.

Our new album Build Ruins was officially released on the 13th June 2011 on New Weird Australia‘s, New Editions Label.  You can purchase the album as a limited edition CD or pay what you like digital download here.

Thanks again to Michelle Barry, William Bowden and Ryota Yamamura for helping us make such an awesome sounding record, and Stuart Buchanan for releasing it.

As promised in my last blog post, finally got the official forenzics site up and running. Direct link to the new site is www.forenzics.net and to this blog forenzics.net.  There’s also a feed from the blog on the new site so you can keep up to date from the one spot.  I’m still tweaking some things but it’s all pretty much there now.  Go have a look and feel free to comment – now that you can!

My apologies if you’ve been trying to access forenzics.net today, I had some issues linking this new blog to the also brand new Forenzics site. I’ll hopefully resolve these issues in the next couple of days but for now you’ll have to make do with this blog. Click on the links to the right to access all our content; music on bandcamp, video’s on vimeo, images on flickr, news on twitter etc. I will be bringing all this content together again in a new forenzics.net site – I just need to work out some of the web tech stuff that I am (obviously) crap at.

This new blog does allow us to have posts by the other members of Forenzics now, and is also comment enabled should you feel the urge to engage us outside of the realms of facebook. Give it a few days, then feel free to let us know what you think of the new blog and site design, features, function or whatever.

Okay loads of news to catch up on….

We’ve played two gigs since my last post. Hopefully you’ve all been keeping up to date via twitter, myspace and facebook. If not – my apologies. We supported the excellent Duchesses at the Excelsior Hotel on the 21st October as part of Bird’s Robe Collective’s Menagerie 2010. Check them out – they a great blend of Mogwai, Sonic Youth, Interpol and even a bit of The Church in there. Joining us on stage for that gig was Finn Ryan on drums who did an awesome job.

On Saturday 30th October we played as part of Electric Brain, a group show consisting of some 15 print, ink, photo and paint artists. We played for the very first time with improvised visuals, provided by Red Cell, projected on a massive translucent screen in front of us – way cool. Video of the show to come…

I’ve finally got around to reworking this site to reflect our latest release – Static and Silence. I had planned to get this happening for the release date but was too swamped at the time to complete it – and figure out all the insane workarounds that come with the iweb territory. I believe things are better in the latest version, though I don’t have it yet.

I’ve also completely redesigned (can you redesign it when you didn’t design it in the first place?) our myspace page along similar lines, complete with a live shot of us at the album launch – courtesy of hopliteandpackhorse. I used one of the templates and followed the instructions available from myspace band support, a great resource for the html challenged like me. So if you’re sick of your current site give it a go – if I can do it almost anyone can.

In the near future I’ll be replacing the image and video pages with feeds from our flickr and youtube (or possibly vimeo) pages, saving much double handling and also allowing access to great looking and sounding HD videos right here.

Should be lots more posts coming in the next week or so, including the sounds unsound festival wrap up, our latest gig at the Excelsior Hotel, drummers and more…

At long last you can purchase your very own copy of our brand new album Static and Silence. It’s available from various retailers in Sydney (see the shop page for details), will very shortly be available on itunes (tomorrow with any luck, time zones have screwed things up a little there), and lastly through this site via paypal checkout using the buy now buttons on the shop, music and home pages.

The album’s been receiving great airplay from the Sydney experimental music shows on 2ser, Fbi Radio, and EastsideFM. Special thanks to New Weird Australia, Sunday Night at the Movies, Slip Inside This House, Music You Don’t Dance To, Utility Fog and The Free Design for their support. Listen to some of the tracks on the music page or check out our reverbnation profile to hear samples of all the tracks online.

Thanks to everyone who made it down to the Static and SIlence Album Launch, we had a blast! Defektro started off the night in great style with his solo noise show – moving from ambient to drone to full on noise with the aid of bizarre hand crafted instruments played through his huge array of effects. Very very impressive. Check him out if you get a chance!

Following up we had the experimental noise pop of Newcastle’s Crab Smasher, definitely a band after our own hearts, playing an intense and almost punk inspired (post-punk anyone…) set with drums, guitar, bass, keys and occasional vocals.

Varlets were next and made a hell of a lot of noise for a two piece playing a very short crunchy crowd pleasing set with drums, guitar and mixing desk (yes mixing desk…).

We were last up and I could not be happier with our show, I felt we really gelled and were as together as we’ve ever been playing experimental improvised music in Forenzics. Thanks to everyone who hung around to the end of our set, I know midnight is pretty late on a school night.

Also thanks to Sue at the Excelsior for booking us, Dylan for mixing us, Tim for his lighting wizardry, Ed for his video work, and Michelle for the thankless task of selling our stuff on the night.

I’ll be posting some video and possibly a link to a review over the next few days.

Once again thanks for making it such an excellent night!

Ed from Hoplite & Packhorse has released a short film documenting the Remote Control group art show put on at Tortuga Studios in July this year at which Forenzics performed two storming sets. The film features two tracks off our H3O album and also a very brief snippet of our performance on the night. Check it out above or on youtube here. Ed also took this cool grungy still of the gig.

Forenzics at Tortuga Studios, July 2009, featuring from left, Matthew Syres, Joe Cummins and Dirk Kruithof

Sneak peek at the new cover artwork featuring the work of guitarist Dirk Kruithof.

At long last Static and Silence is finished! Pretty much ready to go – artwork is also done and we’ll be uploading to itunes etc shortly ready for the release early next year. Exact date to be confirmed. Once again Jorden Brebach and William Bowden have helped us create a record that sounds fantastic, full and sonically rich.