background image
Forest Swords – Thor’s Stone

Videos

Matthew Barnes may have taken his sweet time following up his debut album as Forest Swords with this year’s excellent Engravings LP, but it was worth the wait. However, while most people responded to its dark, delicious grooves with some approving head nods, it seems to have inspired a much more physical reaction from Spanish dancer Guzman Rosado. Director Dave Ma shot Rosado’s interpretation in a Los Angeles industrial wasteland with no one around for miles. Which is fortunate, as they’d have probably got some very strange looks otherwise. “I made him dance repeatedly for about eight hours through the night,” Ma told Nowness, with just a hint of maliciousness.

At the beginning, Rosado’s prone figure is subject to only subtle ripples; a flexing finger here, an undulating muscle there. The close-up shots manage to make his body look uncannily unnatural. His dancer’s shoulder blades, for instance, look positively inhuman, while the way he pulses and jerks (and the sharp editing) call to mind the body horror of Chris Cunningham’s ‘Rubber Johnny’, albeit much more languid. Make sure your screen’s brightness is turned up though, as the surrounding darkness makes it difficult to make everything out otherwise, at least until the final shot of Rosado standing in a dirty river as a smoggy sun rises…

Previous in Videos

Verity Susman - To Make You Afraid

Verity Susman - To Make You Afraid
Verity Susman takes a trip into deep space to find the place where Star Trek meets spunk-spurting saxophones...
Read More

Spotlight

EP Address: Datassette, Sudan Archives, Mighty Lord Deathman and more…

We look back at some of the best EPs released over the summer, including debuts by Sudan Archives and Mighty Lord Deathman…

Read More