..Less keyboards
More keyboards..
Silent Forum presents “here’s the email” from their forthcoming album, “Domestic Majestic.” This intense, guitar-driven piece features an intriguing chord progression, offering a viewpoint from the disgruntled office worker.
Wishing you safety and wellness!
Read our discussion with the band below!
Describe your sound in 3 words
Oli – Vibrant, colourful, playful.
Richard – Need more words.
Elliot – For the drums specifically it’s “Hold Shit Together”.
Tell us a few things about Here’s the Email. What is the main idea behind it?
Dario – A punky, angsty, office malaise on a driven beat. A pop song peppered with augmented chords.
Richard – During the early days of the most recent pandemic, I was receiving a lot of emails starting with sentences such as “I hope you are safe and well”, “I hope your family are well during this turbulent time”, to the point where it started to get quite funny, cooped up in a way too tiny flat going slightly crazy. I used that as the starting point lyrically. It’s a little joke on how small our day to day working lives seemed in the face of a huge, unstoppable global force.
Which track of your upcoming album represents you the most (if any) and why?
Dario – Better With You, which we haven’t released yet, is probably the best guitar part I have written. It’s a run through the harmonic minor scale that becomes the soundtrack to a spy movie. In an alternate reality the 80s would have sounded like that.
Richard – Our previous single Cat Pose does a pretty good job of putting the listener inside my head. It’s about mindfulness in the face of a mess of feelings and issues which get under your skin. There’s another song, unreleased, called Me but not Tired which is about being awake at 2am with various thoughts circling in your head… which I reckon is a fairly universal experience. Hopefully something that will chime with people.
Your most honest and personal lyric?
Richard – Ha. Difficult one to answer. Treat Yourself essentially lists my medical history. This line from future album track The Grand Burstin Hotel is pretty funny: “I’m 30, I’m dead. But I’ll never be alone again.”
Can you elaborate on the influences that shape your unconventional and multifaceted pop-post-punk style?
Dario – Jorge Ben, Bach, Minutemen.
Elliot – I like everything Dario hates and vice versa…
Richard – The Wedding Present, REM, Protomartyr, Clor, Talking Heads.
How do you balance incorporating influences from seminal bands of the last four decades while maintaining your own originality and energy in your music?
Elliot – The honest answer is that I try not to think about it.
Dario – We don’t really listen to any of the same music so it’s never a problem. I don’t really listen to any music that sounds like my guitar playing.
Richard – I’m sure obvious influences seep through my singing, but it is entirely unconscious and unintentional.
Oli – The longer we’ve played together the less I think we draw on our influences and the more we’re influenced by each other’s playing styles – our style has mostly grown naturally by playing in a room together for years.
Looking ahead, what do you hope listeners take away from Here’s the Email and what’s next for Silent Forum after this single’s release?
Richard – After a couple of poppier singles I hope that this more aggressive track gives people a more well rounded indication of what’s in store with our second (and as yet unannounced!) album. The most diverse cuts of LP2 come from album tracks, we can’t wait to get the whole thing out there, and play some shows to people who’ve heard the record!
Oli – When the album lands, I hope that different listeners have different favourite tracks, as we cover a fair bit of stylistic ground.
If you were arrested, what would it be for?
Dario – Negligence of administrative paperwork.
Oli – Nothing, I’m an angel.
Richard – Petty theft.
Thank you!
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