Biography
Forest Zero is the sound of a file transfer between two countries, generations,
and styles of alternative music. It’s kind of like the internet, except it’s an attempt to come together instead of isolating into tribalism.
Forest Zero is a music group that was formed in 2019 on the foundations of the long-forgotten Rainforest project. The core of the band is a group of friends who played music together back in the 90s and helped to create the Slot Art Festival in Poland. Tomasz Bednarek (guitar), Michał Szprynger (bass), Adam Zapał (drums) and Marzena Horyza (flute) after a long hiatus, decided to get together to create something completely new that still kept their original alt-rock ethos. The only missing piece of the puzzle was finding a new singer and lyricist. A network of connections led them to an ex-pat indie rocker from Minneapolis, Sam Erickson.
The band then began collaborating in an experimental way, file sharing songs and ideas through the internet, piecing them together bit by bit.
When the pandemic struck, the will to record was stronger and by 2021 they emerged with a full album of songs each telling a distinct story to the backdrop of diverse musical arrangements.
Like a playlist, the songs let you browse through different genres and eras. Each has a unique flavor – one’s guitar-driven, one’s more dominated by horns, another has strong steel guitar accents or even harps. Yet what glues things together are the various stories each song explores. There are tales of Robin Williams, Nazi leaders, Billie Eilish, St. Augustine, Martin Luther King Jr., and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others hidden in the text waiting to be mined. In listening to them you sink into an amazing anthology of philosophical, sociological, and sometimes even fantastical storytellings that make you think and ask questions about the nature of man and the essence of the world. But no worries, you can still dance to them!