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“absolutely phenomenal” – The Quietus

"scintillating.. a defiant desolate and darkly beautiful album – 9/10" – The Line of Best Fit

“Muscular electronics from the factory floor… possessing an undeniable sense of grandeur that can take your breath away” – Electronic Sound

“like figures in a misted landscape… blurring sources into ambiguous spaces between organ and woodwind” – The Wire

"planetary in scale.. a cold world where broken, snarling things have no choice but to huddle together for survival" – Pitchfork

Forest Swords (aka electronic producer/composer Matthew Barnes) returns with a new album ‘Bolted’. Having spent the past few years working as an in-demand composer and sound designer – writing music for ballet, film and video games – 'Bolted' was recorded over the past year in a warehouse factory space in Barnes’ home city of Liverpool. Across its 11 tracks he dives deeper into his unique sonic vocabulary to weave together a set of tracks that sounds equally muscular and bleak, haunting and euphoric.

As ever in his music, melancholy and euphoria, monochrome and colour, past and future all feel ambiguous. Emotions shift from moment to moment, differences between digital and acoustic instruments more smeared than ever: time, space and sonics move freely in a way that feels equally playful and totally vital.

While his previous album – the acclaimed 'Compassion' released in 2017 – saw Barnes toy with widescreen technicolour, the world of ‘Bolted’ is tightly wound, taught, with a sense of aching urgency like never before. Fizzing deconstructed synths, heavily distorted mallets and marimbas bounce off clattering beats and foggy vocals, all balanced out with lightly dancing woodwind instruments; a layer of dust covering the surface of every track.

Elsewhere on ‘Bolted’ we hear 'Munitions' chugging industrial throb kick off the record, through to 'End's melancholy nostalgia, before plunging back into the psychedelic pounding of urgent closer 'Line Gone Cold', a rumination on grief with a signoff from the late Lee Scratch Perry.

Defiant, desolate, and darkly beautiful: 'Bolted' cements Forest Swords as one of the most remarkable and singular voices working in electronic music.