Friday: 01/08/2008 @ The Packhorse, Leeds. Doors 7.30pm. Forest of Sound in association with Misplaced Music.

£5 on the door.

Join the Last FM fun here.

For this Forest of Sound we’re getting together with our good friends at Misplaced Music to celebrate the release of Gareth S. Brown’s new album, The Gallows on August 4th, which can be pre-ordered from Misplaced Music here.

Bracken (http://www.myspace.com/brackenmusic)
Bracken (aka Chris Adams, co-founder of legends Hood) makes simply stunning music - walls of ambient sound, dark dub bass and atmospheres, destroyed and re-claimed found sound, beats that range from over-powering to perfectly understated. For this show he’ll be doing a special solo/DJ set, much like the captivating sounds he made for us back in May 2007:

" With his tabletop full of keyboard and ancillary electronics he spoiled us rotten with 30 uninterrupted minutes of a work composed especially for this event. Deferentially, it started and ended with choir-like evocations of sacred music, mixing in imagined bells and organ to frame the wider development of shifting sound that constituted the bulk of the piece. At 30 minutes the main surprise was how short it seemed. My attention was wholly absorbed from beginning to end. The mood of careful listening and taking delight in the pure sounds in a building rich with possibilities was brilliantly established, for the great good of all that followed." - Whisperin’ and Hollerin’

Gareth S. Brown (http://www.myspace.com/garethsbrown)
With influences as diverse as Eastern European folk music, funeral marches and jewellery boxes, Gareth creates gorgeous work of layered beauty with nods towards Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Michael Nyman as well as latter day travellers such as Max Richter, Yann Tiersen and Aphex Twin. Amazingly accomplished, hypnotic music.

”…we embark on a journey that takes us through the nineties ambience and seventies experimentation, through beautiful string orchestrations and the subtle chimes of music boxes. It is very beautiful, very epic and needs to be listened to repeatedly. Soft lighting music." - Sandman

Sketches for Albinos (http://www.myspace.com/sketchesforalbinos)
Camped out somewhere in deepest, iciest Iceland, Sketches for Albinos (a.k.a. Matthew Collings) makes music from the ends of the earth. Utterly unique, SfA has all the musical adventure of John Mcentire, Tortoise or Kevin Shields without sounding a bit like any of them. Mr. Collings makes a sound that manages to be both truly heartfelt and organic, but also encompassing the majestic glacial soundscapes that would make the likes of Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz proud. His Christmas show for us last year showed how incredibly innovative and stunning this guys music is – and what he can do with an orchestra of guitars…

“Songs like pale deep-sea creatures, float through an embryonic soup. Muffled, they bend into bulbous shapes. We’re stunned.” - Brighton Source

The Declining Winter (http://www.myspace.com/thedecliningwinter)
The Declining Winter are a new musical project, led by Richard Adams, the co-founder of Domino Records group Hood, and is influenced by the music of Low, The Durutti Column, Songs of Green Pheasant and early Microdisney as well as the myriad sounds of J Dilla and associates. They have recently toured with ambient legends, Stars of the Lid. Live they’re a wonderful, beautiful, pastoral experience.

“…a superbly wide ranging collection of sounds all held together with a certain rustic live feel. It’s both highly intricate and hypnotic at the same time. A rare gem that you shouldn't let pass you by.” - Road Records

”With Goodbye Minnesota, Adams extends [Hood's] late-period move into gentle electronica, warping and glitching minimal folk-pop melodies played on bedroom guitars and drums… autumnal and graceful, its quietly resigned tenor gesturing toward emotional troubles that remain just out of focus.” - Uncut