Space rockers Low Forest return with a new sci-fi EP and attendant novella

Low Forest. // image courtesy the artist

Ever since we saw Kansas City space-rock act Low Forest play their second-ever show opening for Pallbearer a couple years back, we’ve been fans of their big, riffy sonic explorations.

Right out of the gate, the band didn’t go with the usual set of single releases before dropping an EP, but instead put out two albums, Ambivector and Extrovert, whose production allowed them to be synched up and played simultaneously, a la the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka.

For their next release, Orcus 2135: Arrival of the Terraformers, they’re going even further. As the title might suggest, it’s very sci-fi oriented, with artwork hearkening back to the golden age of pulp paperbacks. Add in the fact that Orcus 2135 is inspired by a novella written by Low Forest singer/guitarist Josh King that will be released simultaneously with the EP, with one of the chapters adapted into the EP’s epic, nearly ten minute long closing track, and we had to find out just what the hell is going on.

We hopped on Zoom one evening with Low Forest frontman Josh King and bassist/synthesizer player Alex Dunn to talk all things Orcus 2135: Arrival of the Terraformers ahead of its summer solstice release.

The Pitch: You’re not content with just creating songs. You’re creating bigger things than “Let’s listen to some music.”

Josh King: I never really thought of it that way–that we’re not content. I love just writing songs. We have all these friends who do dungeon synth and other members who are remote players who helped me record the first album. It was like, “We could do a little track–it’s gotta be less than 10 minutes–that is a little sci-fi story. We’ll put it on there and we’ll have just this little thing.”

I’m a grant writer by trade and grant writers are all about word limits and character accounts and page maximums. I didn’t have that and I just started writing this 10-minute story and then it just didn’t stop for like two or three months and that’s what came out.

Alex, what is it like when the songwriter for your band is like, “Hey, so, I wrote a book”?

Alex Dunn: I mean, I love the challenge. I’m also sort of a bit of a bookworm myself, especially in the sci-fi realm, so we also connected not just musically but also through this sci-fi film and just storytelling and so when he propose the idea of the whole dungeon synth thing, I thought that was pretty neat, especially because at the time, I was listening to a lot of Blood Incantation and they had just done that all synth album [Timewave Zero], so I was all for it.

I already had a Moog Grandmother that I acquired, so it was just perfect timing for me to just really incorporate that more into our band. We just basically just shared ideas through Discord. Discord was sort of like our sixth band member in a way, ’cause we would just always be on there, file-sharing and sharing ideas and just riffing off each other, and that eventually ended up being the audiobook track.

I love the idea of a space-rock band making that literal. You’re going into outer space with this EP. Did the book come first, or did the music, or were they created in collaboration with one another?

Josh King: The music came first. I should say, credit to Alex, because I’ll write a lot of songs and then I’ll be like, “Here guys, here are all the demos,” and he is like, “I like these three. These should be an EP,” and I’m like, “Perfect. I’ll write a story.” It kind of pulled from the lyrics, but the themes of the songs are already personal to me, so it was easy to pull imagery and content and then just roll with the story.

I think the story flowed organically. Also, I work a full-time job. I’m a dad. I’m married. We’ve got a whole life going and I found that one of the easiest ways for me to work on the book was to turn on dictation software. I would just talk while I was driving around. If I had to drive anywhere, I would just talk into this thing and ballpark the dialogue. It was just one giant continuous paragraph of all these takes of dialogue, then I would go back through and pick the pieces that I liked, and then bring that into the actual document.

Where are you going to record all of this, once you’ve sorted out your demos and you’ve decided on the tracks for this EP? How does the rest of the band contribute to this and then, how do you take that into its final form?

Josh King: I went to audio engineering school for a few years. I knew enough to be dangerous, and so I released a bunch of albums, poorly, up ’til about 2020 when I was like, “Okay, I’ve got, I’ve made enough mistakes. I can do some space rock stuff that I’ve always wanted to do” in this little basement studio. [gestures behind him] This makeshift home studio’s where we record everything and we have an interface down here. I do a lot of that mixing and editing, cleanup, and some of the preliminary EQ, and then we can either shop it out to a mixing studio, which was the case with Paul Malinowski at Massive Sound, or we can release it just straight from here.

What made you decide to go with Paul Malinowski? I have an idea of what I think the answer might be, but I would like to hear from you all.

Alex Dunn: Oh, well, I mean, you know, we’re massive fans of Shiner. You can’t really deny it, just from hearing our music, you know? The Holy Trinity for us is Hum, Failure, and Shiner. That’s our perfect trifecta, honestly. We’re just massive fans and it was just a no-brainer for us to work with him on the mastering side. It was a perfect pairing and I think it just ended up sounding amazing.

What’s the physical version of this going to end up being?

Josh King: For a long time. I’ve worked with Electric Cat Studios. They have always worked with me to do small run batches of CDs. Alex did some incredible album art for this project. Then I get into the layout and then I send it on to Electric Cat, and they make the CD packaging by hand in Kansas City. We’ll do a little limited run. Then, on the book side this is a book that I got printed for the story itself.

Alex, tell me some more about this art, ’cause it looks like vintage pulp art from the sixties.

Alex Dunn: I mean, that’s totally 100% the aesthetic that I was going for–just very pulpy, you know? Some short story that you would get from a grocery store rack for a quarter. That little bite-sized paperback that you could pick up was exactly the vibe that I was going for. Josh threw in a bunch of Easter eggs of our band of all and of the other bands that we’ve played with throughout the book, and so, I sort of did the same thing. I sprinkled a lot of song references on the cover and in the art, as well.

Low Forest plays Farewell on Monday, June 23, with Cloakroom, the Casket Lottery, and Another Heaven. Details on that show here.