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Forest People Pop

by Derek Piotr

/
1.
you arrived like a tonic when I needed most you make complete sense undefined my heart cries out after you leave there is weight behind my ribs that you must move there is weight that you must move through the world now (I look for hints of you in everyone all the time) there is nothing I can do but watch you move
2.
Light 02:49
when you are with me I feel so light (so light) how come when you are leaving I don’t know what to do forward in time I don’t know what to do (so light)
3.
Hear You 04:33
your tide rises & subsides giving strange shapes and take (but I still hear you say) sand slow, hot: I walk blocking out everything as I move for your day (but I still hear you say)
4.
ice floe it's a piece of us so we're speaking up while it's heating up play your cards right so we can beat the Trump with the foresight underneath us closed eyelids while the levels rising fossil fuels bring more violence that's warfare for the warm air they warned us so don't go there we need cold air face the cold facts it's like we're giving earth another toe-tag it's now or never we need more progression
5.
Clear 03:22
calm water pools around us i know you don't understand but you accept and the sun is out and we accept (to feel you to fold you to be near you to know you) clear clear flow calm water pools around us calm water spills all over i know you don't understand but you accept and the sun is out and we accept
6.
Crush on You 03:33
hey I got a crush on you and I wonder if you feel the same I got a crush on you I got a crush on you I wonder when you’ll come my way hey (sun star) I wonder when you’ll come my way hey if you would have the grace I know you would the shape of your fingers your face I got a crush on you so let me in
7.
Sky 04:23
you come on silent paws I ask your name but you don't reply instead I turn to wait for you I turn away I move the sky I churn your eyes into my skin I move the sky you come (hey I don't ask much I won't ask you) I move the sky
8.
soft glow fights back the shadow you move at a pace I don’t understand you move like a timelapse I don’t understand
9.
didn’t know what it was to be possessed by love until you arrived completely on fire searing my mind while my soul floats down aquamarine rivers and I can’t ascribe an endpoint to your namesake the shape of your fingers your face I will battle in this framework until I find an accurate path
10.
Sunup 01:45
in the mornings I look for you and you are not here

about

Although many themes echo those of its precursor Drono, Forest People Pop marks the boldest stylistic shift in Piotr’s discography. This is Piotr’s most vivid exploration of the melodies, rhythms and hooks of western pop music, refracted through the prism of his own passion for global indigenous musics such as Egyptian electro-chaabi, Algerian raï and Indonesian gamelan.

Forest People Pop has its roots in the Drono sessions, with the previous album’s abstract formlessness failing to satiate Piotr’s restless fascination with percussion. As such, the blueprint for this polyrhythmic record is centred on a marriage between traditional indigenous forest rhythms from across the globe and perceptive references to contemporary pop, hip-hop and club production. These pop allusions are diverse and fascinating, by turns evoking the breaks of Timbaland, the pristine gloss of SOPHIE, Dirty Projectors’ experimentation and the chameleonic shape-shifting of MIA. Hearing the recognisably maximalist sounds of urban music melding with the repetition of Piotr’s indigenous instrumentation is an alien experience, evoking a parallel universe whose mainstream radio is an uncanny post-colonial distortion of our own.

Yet despite contrasts and hybridisation found throughout Forest People Pop, at its centre lies a genuine admiration for pop aesthetics. Its tracks are full of moments that are emotive, catchy and – often overlooked in much contemporary experimental music – fun! Auto-tune, twenty-first century pop’s most ubiquitous instrument, is employed on every track, often to extreme degrees (as in the playful melodies of ‘Light’ and ‘Ice Floe’). Piotr forces the unconventional vocal scales of his indigenous musical influences through auto-tune, whose westernised struggle to recognise them creates a voice that is thrillingly surreal.

Forest People Pop is also Piotr’s first unabashedly devotional record, with most of its songs ruminating on love; both autobiographical and universal. Pre-release single ‘Tonic/You Move’, which opens the album, is unflinching in its emotional content. Spontaneously written, its freeform lyrical structure amplifies the intensely personal sentimentality. There are references throughout to nature and environmental concerns, which are themes that have guided much of Piotr’s output to date, but his lyrics here foreground these issues more explicitly and affectingly than ever before.

Forest People Pop is an impression of western pop music from the perspective of a lover of global musical traditions. Indeed, by lyrically and sonically investing so personally in this body of work, Piotr succeeds in deeply affecting the listener: a reflection of the impact that devotional pop music has on our own daily emotions.

-Text by Dr. Michael Waugh

credits

released June 16, 2017

mastered by cory allen at altered ear

photography by christiana rifaat
shirt by bar soo
styling: christopher rice
post: lyster periotto/derek piotr
passionflower: dylan perkinson
concept: derek piotr


[check tracks individual
for song credits and lyrics]

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Derek Piotr

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice.

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