Decommissioned Forests release new single and video for ‘Bread to the Ducks’
Decommissioned Forests release new single and video for 'Bread to the Ducks'
Decommissioned Forests have released a new single and video (which we present you exclusively) for “Bread to the Ducks”. “Bread to the Ducks” is taken from their third album “Chemistry” (2023). This release also contains a live version of “Eel Tank” and the tracks “Insert Your Name” and “Smash”.
The single is the second in a series of pieces about a massive alien art gallery travelling through space. Filled with exhibits often featuring live captured specimens that attempt to capture something of the social aspects of the various civilisations and cultures that they have visited so far.
The single is also available via Bandcamp.
Talking about this alien art gallery, Rael explains, “I had this flash fiction piece called, Eel Tank about a man trapped in a tank full of eels, blindfolded, with breathing apparatus strapped to his face and no idea of how long he’d been there. And it kind of grew into it being an alien art exhibit featuring a captured and imprisoned human, trying to capture something of what it is to be a human on planet earth. After doing more spoken word lyrics and poems on our previous releases, Daniel suggested I try some prose, so we made Eel Tank, which is also on the album Chemistry (2023). It’s great to perform live because I get to shout and throw myself around the stage. Daniel and Howard thought it worked well and asked if I had any more, and I said, ‘Well I have got a whole series of these, the next one is Bread to the Ducks but it’s a bit out there…”
Below is the video for the new single.
The Howard Gardner video for Bread to the Ducks explores the narrative of the words. He explains, “Normally when I’m working on a music video concept, I try to avoid too much of a literal interpretation of the lyrics. In this instance though, Max had a very definite concept in mind and a literal interpretation seemed to be the only viable route. I love science fiction and the overall dark tone of the piece; it seemed like an opportunity to lean into the absurdist nature of the words and really have some fun with it. This has to be one of the oddest things I’ve animated. But it was a great experience! As a child I was always fascinated by crappy looking old museum dioramas. This seemed the natural aesthetic way to go with the story we we’re telling. Their revolutionary AI programming led them to discard bone and muscle and purely focus on offal. That is, the organs. They’d peck through to get to the sex organs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, brain and even lung.”
When pressed on what it’s about, Rael responded, “There’s definitely an influence from the book, ‘Under the Skin’ by Michael Faber… This track is about a lot of things: scarcity economics, capitalism, and animal factory farming. I’d like to point out that this alien art gallery is not set in some ficticious dystopian future. This is all happening right now.”
About Decommissioned Forests
The London based experimental electronic trio, consisting of multimedia artist Howard Gardner, instrumentalist and producer Daniel Vincent, and vocalist Max Rael, have been creating music together as Decommissioned Forests since 2017.
Taking a broad range of influences by outsider artists such as Coil, Current 93, Cluster, Nine Inch Nails, Nurse With Wound and Throbbing Gristle, the band creates sound worlds with an array of analog, digital, and virtual, synthesizers and sampled acoustic and classical instruments which serve as a backdrop to Rael’s lyrics.
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