There’s not much to In All That Drifts From Summit Down, the debut LP from A Dead Forest Index—each of the album’s 13 tracks are comprised of guitar, vocals, and simple percussion. Yet its minimalist construction belies the textured atmospherics it creates, slowly built up, track by track, lending it a natural gravitas. Flavorwire has an exclusive early peek at the album, due out April 29 on Sargent House—you can stream it below.
A Dead Forest Index is the brothers Adam (vocals/guitar) and Sam Sherry (drums/piano), who’ve arrived in London from their hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, via the shores of Melbourne, Australia. What started as a solo project from Adam in 2008 had evolved into a collaboration by 2010, with Sam adding percussive weight to his brother’s Fleet and Foxy vocals. The brothers channel some of the more drone elements of Low, layering repetitive harmonies over sparse guitar strums.
As the bothers toured extensively from 2012—2014, they put out two EPs, “Antique” and “Cast of Lines.” The latter was released on Jehnny Beth’s (Savages) Pop Noire label, which led to a collaboration between the two groups: a composition and performance called “In What I’m Seeing; the Sun” presented at the Barbican’s Station to Station Festival in 2015. Savages guitarist Gemma Thompson also features on two In All That Drifts From Summit Down tracks, “Myth Retraced” and “Sand Verse.”
They recently completed a European jaunt in support of Sargent House labelmate Chelsea Wolfe; you can catch them in the states through early June, and buy All That Drifts From Summit Down here.