Forester

The systems of nature are at once deeply complex and gracefully simple. Given that Forester’s music functions similarly, it makes sense that they named themselves after the woods. The Los Angeles-based indie electronic duo, David Parris and Xander Carlson, make lush soundscapes both inspired by and evocative of views from a mountain, deep pink sunsets, wind through the trees and the stars on a clear night. The nourishing effect these things have on a human soul? That’s how they want their music to make you feel. The cool thing is that it does. “There’s a section along the trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney called Forester Pass,” Carlson says. “Hiking it was one of the most impactful experiences of my life. The freedom I felt up there, we're trying to put that energy in the music.” Based in Los Angeles, the longtime friends launched the Forester project in 2019, working nine-to-five gigs and making music together at night. They experienced immediate success with their debut single “Spark” – a deep exhale of a track that was picked up by YouTube tastemaker Trap Nation, signed to its label Lowly Palace and has since collected more than 5.7 million streams on Spotify. True to its name, the song was an auspicious beginning that caught the ear of an A&R at Kygo’s Palm Tree Records, where Forester signed in 2020. This was all of course happening in the dark heart of the pandemic, a moment that offered Parris and Carlson, both then recent college grads, time to just make music. They got in the car and drove north to Carlson’s family cabin in Mammoth Lakes, California, on the eastern slope of the vast Sierra Nevada mountain range. “Nobody was around, stores were closed,” Carlson recalls. “We spent months there creating music. It was a prolific time for us.” Here, at 8,000 feet, the guys further developed the Forester sound, which falls into a dreamy, achingly emotional and thoroughly sophisticated, middle ground between the indie folk of Bon Iver – a hero to both Parris and Carlson – and melody-focused electronic giants like Avicii. The music made in the mountains became their 2020 sophomore LP, A Range Of Light. The album’s theme is healing through nature – a phenomenon they experienced while making it, with time off spent swimming, hiking, off-roading in the back country and taking in the night sky. The Forester catalog now encompasses three albums: A Range Of Light, 2019’s Kerosene and 2022’s Watercolor. Together, these LPs have collected an incredible 72.7 million global streams, in addition to a growing fanbase made up of both longstanding dance fans and scene newcomers. Forester has been meeting these fans out on the road, playing their first live show in June of 2021 at Colorado’s epic Red Rocks Amphitheatre when they opened for Kygo. The Norwegian powerhouse also invited them to open for him at his massive summer 2022 stadium shows in Oslo and Mexico City, gigs that put the duo in front of tens of thousands of fans. Outsidelands 2022 in San F…