On October 15, Seattle-based band Fotoform will release their new album ‘Horizons’ via Dismal Nitch (pre-order). The band have also shared the official video for the album’s first pre-release single Running. The video was directed by Erik Foster. Running was written during a period of significant change and reflection for the band and is first track the band wrote with their new line up. 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 song is statement of purpose as the band rethought how they approached their sound and writing. Watch the video clip for Running via YouTube below.
Fotoform’s Kim House reflects: “On Running, it was inspiring, and in some ways freeing, to reconstruct and re-envision everything. With one less guitar we had more space to play with and fill or intentionally not fill. I’d just started playing around with a drum machine and 16-track at home, and this one was a result of really stripping back everything to the bass and vocals and then building it up from there.
At its core Running is about peeling back the layers to connect with your innermost self. Summoning the courage, patience and stillness to distill it down and uncover what truly matters, to listen to our hearts and tap into the subconscious. It’s about facing fears and insecurities and having the courage to go after what will truly make you happy (or “make your heart happy” as my dad would say), which oftentimes might be in the opposite direction of what we’re running toward, whether in relationships, life paths and choices, etc.
The hardest thing sometimes is to look deep within and listen to ourselves, to follow our instincts and face what we may know is true but are too afraid to admit for fear of change, risk, loss, disappointment, or failure.
Running is available now on all streaming services.
‘Horizon’ album details + more about Fotoform
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’. 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. 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 2019, with Michael Schorr joining soon after. 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 2019 (“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.
‘Horizons’ track listing
1. Shadow Spreads
2. Running
3. Too Late
4. You Set Fire To The Sun
5. We Only Have So Long
6. Shut Out The World
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