During a Skype call with Adam and Sam Sherry, the two brothers that make up New Zealand duo A Dead Forest Index, the sound of a squawking bird echoes in the distance. The two brothers are outside of a pub in Leipzig, where they recently moved after living in Melbourne and London (and before that, their home city of Auckland), and aside from their surprisingly loud, avian companion, it’s eerily quiet. The scene, in a sense, is metaphorical of the band’s art—sparse, minimal, and unsettling in the most fascinating ways.
On April 29, A Dead Forest Index will release their debut album, In All That Drifts From Summit Down, via Sargent House. It’s an album built on minimal arrangements, sometimes little more than guitar, voice and a simple beat. But within those relatively stripped-down arrangements, there’s a whole expanse of sound and emotion, sometimes accessible, as on “Tide Walks,” and in other places chillingly dark, as on “Ringing Sidereal.” It’s not surprising that the company they keep is similarly invested in such dark aesthetics: The album features appearances by Savages guitarist Gemma Thompson, and this spring the band is touring with Chelsea Wolfe.
Treble spoke to the Sherry brothers about their travels across the globe, their new album and the influence of the natural world on their music.
Treble: When did you start playing music together?
Adam Sherry: Maybe probably together since about 2010, or late 2009. I started this as a solo project and I moved to Melbourne, and Sam kind of followed about a year later. Once we were in the same city again, we started playing together more as a band. So things started to progress around 2010. We’ve played in a lot of different bands in Auckland, when we were growing up. A lot of friends’ projects. But this was the first time where we really seriously collaborated.
To read the entire interview, read more below or click HERE.
A Dead Forest Index will be on tour with Chelsea Wolfe starting April 24th and their upcoming album In All That Drifts From Summit Down is to be released on April 29th via Sargent House. See all dates below, and for all ticket/show details click HERE.
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