Watch: Forest - "Box" [Premiere]

Where spry guitars spurt, deadpan vocals that rival Julian Casablancas’ (The Strokes) deadpan delivery are trodden through happy, fuzzy textures. We watch various character doodles attempt to rescue a lonely, boxed-in protagonist…but we won’t give away the ending.

Speaking about the video, director Otis Moorman said: “I wanted to give the video a sort of up-front, DIY feel, relying on stuff I could do in front of the camera rather than in editing. As a result, the process of making it really was as simple as taking photo after photo of sticky notes on my bedroom wall. It’s all about limits being placed on you, and eventually using those limits to escape the apparent box that they put you in. In the end, it took roughly 1,323 unique sticky notes, and an insane amount of hours (to give an indication, the average frame took 2-5 minutes to draw). This was the first time I’ve ever done any animation like this, so it really was quite a gruelling learning experience - in fact, you can actually see the drawing and animation improve over the course of the video, which is pretty neat. Other than that, I hope people enjoy it, and if you’re planning on animating stuff yourself, don’t use pen and paper. It’s horrific.”

“Box” is an assured indie-pop nugget that warms us up nicely for their new EP, Wisdom Tusk (stream here). Limited green vinyl editions are available via Indelabel.

Catch Forest live on the following dates:

May
2 - Old Blue Last, London
4 - Handmade Festival, Leicester

June
6 - Hare and Hounds, Birmingham