Be Forest /Lightfoils

  Hearing some of these tracks truly bring tears to my eyes they are so fucking beautiful.....I'll be ok.  This show was a fucking mission. I bought my ticket early. A lot was riding on this show.  Hmm, I can say that about every show I see. But Lightfoils was on this one! Be Forest is from Italy.  Earthbeat was released in 2014 and that is what sold me to them. They played Empty Bottle where they played Airwaves. The sound was clean. The memory is distant enough for it to be enshrined by my German Expressionist archivist mind. It was my first time seeing HIDE as well. It was an interesting bill.
 I was so happy to see Lightfoils support the Chicago end of this 2019 Be Forest tour.  They got a new LP, Chambers.  This Time Is Up comes out confident and sunny with an urgent pace. The drummer John with a fire lit under him, that means everyone is feeling it. It wakes everyone up like it's their first Red Bull ever! I like how the drums brings that illusion of stumbling downhill in a drug infused stupor.  The guitars too, have this twang to them that further sells it. Then right in the middle, a wave of chill hits from around the corner.  It washes over as you walk it off. Summer Nights starts off without a care in the world, then picks up. It was a real blessed thrill to see these two bands in the same night.
  I arrived on time to catch some of the opening act I think they were called Blue Unit and they were great as well. I was riding a good feeling that took the edge of the shyness away.  I said hi  to a combination of goth and shoegaze friends. It was friends from two scenes... What is the difference? Hmm, goth friends and I dress in black deliberately, nearly fucking always. In the shoegaze scene, music did not take on a fashion to distinguish itself.  So as I drifted about I genuinely saw friends from different ends of a continuum. Vantablack on one end and fade into come-as-you-is on the other. I feel like I must paint a detailed....baroque....well. I wanna remember this for who observed it with me. This show was before a moment anticipated from afar now in past tense. I want to remember more of this than Coleridge did Kubla Khan. The memory not being a dream is grounded in fact. It happened, I was there with other friends. Details fade, smeared over time. So let us make this dye darker still. Philly I think was the DJ for the night. Yeah I remember him playing Walking Bicycles in between the bands. He played from them their newest song.

 By now, I have already heard songs from Chambers. Its comfort music at this point, but its not taking their presence for granted. The familiarity needs to sustain itself and so I go see them even if I have seen them already. With Be Forest it was the one show, the CD, then YouTube videos. The....familiarity is met differently. The biggest difference being with Be Forest it may only be this one other time to see them....actually see them. Italy seems to be a long fucking way after all. I've been all over Earthbeat and I'm barely listening to more of the first LP Cold beyond Florence. Perhaps it was laziness, but I did not look up Knocturne before going to Empty Bottle. Tech just spoiled us so fucking much that we can dismiss it.  I could have YouTubed it.....but I could not be bothered. So whatever was going to hit me, it was going to be a deer in the headlights type. I just trusted that it was going to be the best. And fucking hell was it ever.
  Bengala has the crisp deep rolling drums with the bass and spacey guitar. Costanza's chill breathy voice calmly telling us ....mercy and decline, that is all we will find. That is bleak.  The whole album is full of these phrases that hit you with the impact of stepping into a mine field. Gemini compresses into a few minutes the dramatic atmosphere of Wuthering Heights into a rolling avalanche.  Atto I an instrumental seems to me to have whispers of the songs to come.  It's sweetened darkness with a pensive beginning.  For me its a tell that the drums are going to be raw, or at least different when the drummer is standing.  I am not coming from this Kubla Khan without souvenirs, the intangible and fucking merch. The better for me to remember. I can't believe I almost did not buy the shirt. It's a medium that actually I like how it fits....wow.  There has got to be a reason I am willing to hold onto relics that take up space, wear it even. The music is cool, bouncy aggressive and still thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Zig