"Taking their name from a mid-century avant-garde photography movement..."
Within "Too Late"'s pummeling progressively shifting bass and drum lines, sparkling splashes of goth pop guitar and hazy layered vox there lies a fervent post rock / post punk urgency drenched with melancholia. I love the counter poised beauty between Kim House's (bass, vocals, synths) lovely vocal wails against the jammy heaviness and tightly wound instrumentation. Geoffrey Cox's nimble and melodic guitar work has both hard and soft edges and Michael Schorr's drumming (formerly of Death Cab for Cutie / Long Winters) is exquisite in it's artful ferocity.
"Too Late" is from the Seattle trio's upcoming sophomore album, "Horizons", dropping October 21st of this year (2021).
-Robb Donker Curtius
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THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://fotoform.bandcamp.com/
https://twitter.com/fotoform
https://www.facebook.com/fotoformmusic
https://www.instagram.com/fotoformband/
Taking their name from a mid-century avant-garde photography movement, Seattle’s Fotoform create melodic, gauzy, and driving post-punk with their second album, Horizons. Longtime music collaborators (and married couple) Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar) are now joined by former Death Cab for Cutie / Long Winters drummer Michael Schorr. The band takes an ambitious leap forward with Horizons. With recording sessions bookending the lockdown, Horizons pivots from the wall of guitars on their self-titled debut to a more nuanced and cinematic follow-up, adding synths and layers of guitars, while drawing on the textures of shoegaze and dream pop with the drive of post-punk. Over the years, Fotoform have further refined their plaintive, bass-driven kinetic swoon which was described by The Big Takeover as “a riot of ‘80s post-punk.” On their forthcoming release, the band updated their dark, left-of-the-dial moods and melodies, weaving in traces of The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and The Chameleons. Listeners can also hear shimmering tapestries of the Cocteau Twins, For Against, and Slowdive as well as contemporaries Drab Majesty and Soft Kill.
Kim House and Geoffrey Cox founded the dark, goth-adjacent dream pop of C’est la Mort (dubbing the sound “pointy-shoegaze”) shortly after they married, and released one album on their own Dismal Nitch label, as well as various compilation tracks (including a limited split 7” with Stars for American Laundromat’s Please Please Please tribute to The Smiths). After various lineup changes, the band reemerged as Fotoform in late 2016, with Michael Schorr joining in 2019. They released their self-titled debut in 2017 and followed it up with the Peel-Sessions-like immediacy of their Part-Time Punks EP in 2018. Recording for Horizons began right before the 2020 lockdown with Evan Foster (Boss Martians, The Sonics, Dirty Sidewalks) and resumed a year later with Foster and Matt Bayles (Minus the Bear, Mastodon, Pearl Jam) recording the drums.
Fotoform’s self-titled debut was voted as one of KEXP Listeners’ Top 90.3 albums of 2017 and made numerous year-end lists (The Big Takeover, Part-Time Punks), as well as being featured as a KEXP song of the day (“I Know You’re Charming”). The band supported the record with tours in Europe and the West Coast. Fotoform followed up with a Part-Time Punks EP the next year, which was selected as one of the Big Takeover’s EPs of the 2018 (“Holy [insert expletive]!” as Jack Rabid succinctly put it). They released two benefit singles in 2020, “Yves Klein Blue” (voter outreach) and the sonic holiday snow globe of “They Say It’s Always Lonely” (benefitting Seattle food banks), expanding their sound to include synths, and they added these new colors and textures to their post-shoegaze swirl on Horizons.
The band looks forward to getting back to touring and experiencing live music and are already writing songs for their next releases, including a split 7” with Savage Republic.
* * *
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://fotoform.bandcamp.com/
https://twitter.com/fotoform
https://www.facebook.com/fotoformmusic
https://www.instagram.com/fotoformband/
Taking their name from a mid-century avant-garde photography movement, Seattle’s Fotoform create melodic, gauzy, and driving post-punk with their second album, Horizons. Longtime music collaborators (and married couple) Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar) are now joined by former Death Cab for Cutie / Long Winters drummer Michael Schorr. The band takes an ambitious leap forward with Horizons. With recording sessions bookending the lockdown, Horizons pivots from the wall of guitars on their self-titled debut to a more nuanced and cinematic follow-up, adding synths and layers of guitars, while drawing on the textures of shoegaze and dream pop with the drive of post-punk. Over the years, Fotoform have further refined their plaintive, bass-driven kinetic swoon which was described by The Big Takeover as “a riot of ‘80s post-punk.” On their forthcoming release, the band updated their dark, left-of-the-dial moods and melodies, weaving in traces of The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and The Chameleons. Listeners can also hear shimmering tapestries of the Cocteau Twins, For Against, and Slowdive as well as contemporaries Drab Majesty and Soft Kill.
Kim House and Geoffrey Cox founded the dark, goth-adjacent dream pop of C’est la Mort (dubbing the sound “pointy-shoegaze”) shortly after they married, and released one album on their own Dismal Nitch label, as well as various compilation tracks (including a limited split 7” with Stars for American Laundromat’s Please Please Please tribute to The Smiths). After various lineup changes, the band reemerged as Fotoform in late 2016, with Michael Schorr joining in 2019. They released their self-titled debut in 2017 and followed it up with the Peel-Sessions-like immediacy of their Part-Time Punks EP in 2018. Recording for Horizons began right before the 2020 lockdown with Evan Foster (Boss Martians, The Sonics, Dirty Sidewalks) and resumed a year later with Foster and Matt Bayles (Minus the Bear, Mastodon, Pearl Jam) recording the drums.
Fotoform’s self-titled debut was voted as one of KEXP Listeners’ Top 90.3 albums of 2017 and made numerous year-end lists (The Big Takeover, Part-Time Punks), as well as being featured as a KEXP song of the day (“I Know You’re Charming”). The band supported the record with tours in Europe and the West Coast. Fotoform followed up with a Part-Time Punks EP the next year, which was selected as one of the Big Takeover’s EPs of the 2018 (“Holy [insert expletive]!” as Jack Rabid succinctly put it). They released two benefit singles in 2020, “Yves Klein Blue” (voter outreach) and the sonic holiday snow globe of “They Say It’s Always Lonely” (benefitting Seattle food banks), expanding their sound to include synths, and they added these new colors and textures to their post-shoegaze swirl on Horizons.
The band looks forward to getting back to touring and experiencing live music and are already writing songs for their next releases, including a split 7” with Savage Republic.
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