The Forest In Me was recorded remotely both before, during and after the pandemic by Dirty Jim White and George Xylouris with help from Guy Picciotto to create an abstract impressionistic chill out album.
The album opens with Second Sister that had random drumming with Spanish guitar flourishes.
Latin White is more of a country hoe down, fiddle led with the drumming coming and going at odd angles like they are set up on a sloping floor.
Seeing The Everyday is super carefully picked guitar, occasional tambourine beats, with a single drum on this laid back not quite their exploration.
Missing Heart seems to take a darker turn, slow reveries with minimal abstractions over long toned snare sounds.
Tails Of Time has a classical guitar with shaken percussion an assortment of noises to disquiet and disrupt the listener while still feeling rather relaxed.
Night Club has some clattering percussive beats with odd tonal noises over the top almost like you can hear the noises bleeding through the walls of a Nightclub, you're standing outside of rather than inside enjoying it, as the tonal sounds become more middle eastern.
The title track The Forest In Me has deep gong timpani with stray picked notes almost like it's raining deep in the forest.
Red Wine is the opposite of the Neil Diamond idea of what Red Wine sounds like, this is much more drowning in your sorrows while sipping a Medoc while dreaming of Mavrodaphne as this slowly builds into a more insistent tune.
Underworld takes us deep within Mother Red Caps lair, on one of those nights when the wrong line-up of your favorite band from the 80's is playing, your sipping on overpriced beer, trying not to go into the rotten loos, as the drum rolls and the strings are plucked, almost as if for the soundcheck, the drummer is testing his drums and cymbals, I almost expect the soundman to come on telling him to hit the snare again.
Witnessed By Angels is brighter as the tambourine explore the notes being plucked or strummed over super minimal drums.
Memories And Souvenirs is the sound of an old school train whistle, as that train slowly rolls down the track, screeching sounds at the first bend, as you're on your way to wherever you spent the school holidays as a kid, for me we are going to Southend just as the piper rears his head to distract us once more.
The album closes with Long Doll that's a reasonably brief exploration of someone plucking at the cord that should make the Long Doll speak, but it no longer works, so they pluck the cord instead and magically it sounds like a banjo being played.
Find out more at https://www.dragcity.com/products/the-forest-in-me https://ffm.to/theforestinme https://xylouriswhiteshop.bandcamp.com/album/the-forest-in-me https://www.facebook.com/XylourisWhiteBand
