The Forms

The Forms are a duo based in Rockaway Beach, Queens, comprised of NYers Alex Tween & Matt Walsh, who’ve made music together since high school. The band skyrocketed to the apex of mid-aughts indie cool when their self-released, Steve Albini-recorded debut offering, Icarus, received rapturous plaudits from Pitchfork, and the rest of the fledgling indie-rock internet, for its obstreperously arty, mathematical post-rock. An eponymous full(er)-length follow-up tempered the group’s knotty, technical compositions and instrumentalism with increasing warmth and melodicism. But it was 2011’s oddball Derealization EP – a “reimagining” of the band’s earlier material that featured guest vocals from some of their musical heroes: Shudder To Think’s Craig Wedren and The National’s Matt Berninger– that pointed the dynamic (albeit highly roundabout) way forward. The band worked with Albini once again for their forthcoming release - an album that seems to operate entirely within its own orbit, obeying its own peculiar, inscrutable logic. It is an album of electronic dance-pop envisioned by a couple of reformed auteurist math-rockers. It’s leftfield pop with left-brain chops. It sometimes seems light years from their early work, but making this album was a return to a natural state never previously attained: working as a duo; recording at leisure in their home studio. This is is their comfort zone - the culmination of something that started over a decade ago in a much different world.