Ármo by Sébastien Forrester

Sébastien Forrester is back to Superpang with ‘Ármo’, ending a trilogy of long-form compositions after releasing both ‘Bouôrgxo’ in June 2023 and ‘Nèplo’ in January 2024 on the label.

The Paris-based Franco-British percussionist and composer has spent most of the last year and a half making music for dance, theater and installations - one of those commissions was the starting point for ‘Coruscate’, a drone-based body of work for gongs and vibraphone released on Forest Swords’ label Dense Truth earlier this year -, collaborating extensively and performing alongside Coby Sey, Alpha Maid, Speakers Corner Quartet, Tirzah, Loraine James, etc, all of which made him explore new sound design tools and informed both his practice as a drummer and his approach to composition. Sébastien Forrester started outlining the foundations of ‘Ármo’ back in the fall 2024, willing to fuse his passion for percussion and a growing desire to experiment with broader, lusher dynamics.

The 22-minute piece, divided into four segments, is profoundly hazy and magmatic. Raw, improvised live takes and digitally processed sources are constantly intertwined, blurring the line between organic and synthetic more than ever before in the musician’s work. Though ‘Ármo’ explores a slightly different angle of Sébastien Forrester’s palette, many traces of his sonic signature remain: impulsive bursts of percussion and thunderous rattles meet wheezing bagpipes and wavering hurdy-gurdy drones, as previously heard on ‘Bouôrgxo’ and ‘Nèplo’.

The piece indeed gets on with his interest for the bourrée, a particular type of traditional folk song and dance from Aveyron and the Auvergne region, as well the timbre of the cabrette bagpipe and the use of gongs and marimba, played both with bows and mallets, as a textural element - but those acoustic sources are, this time, arranged into lush orchestrations, developing a near-symphonic energy. An unusual instrument in his palette is the psaltery, an antique chordophone similar to the zither, popular in Provence and Occitania in the 17th century, that Forrester incorporates into his drum kit and plays with sticks in an instinctive and utterly expressive way on ‘Ármo, hoist’.

Beautifully described by his close friend and collaborator, the organist and composer Variéras, as ‘the memory of a landscape that doesn’t exist anymore’, ‘Ármo’ also carries a strong emotional and poetic weight, making it a deep, dramatic output that, at some point, also rewards listeners with a trance-like meditative state.

Percussionnist, composer, sound chaser, fka Holy Strays

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