Jason Forrest Biography via Allmusic
by Paul Simpson
Jason Forrest is best known for making highly energetic electronic music from cut-up samples of disco, classic rock, new wave, and several other genres, filtered through a production aesthetic equally inspired by John Oswald and the Bomb Squad. While his tracks heavily employ distorted breakbeats and glitch effects common to IDM and other experimental electronic styles, there's far more of a sense of unbridled joy to his work than that of most other producers in his field. Between his record labels, his radio show, and his own performances and recordings, Forrest has done more to promote the loosely defined breakcore scene than nearly any other American. First appearing during the early 2000s under the pseudonym Donna Summer, he switched to his birth name in 2004, when he released his most acclaimed recording, The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash (listen here). Relocating to Berlin for several years, his music became more club-focused, reflected by 2008's rave-inspired Panther Tracks (listen here). His musical output slowed during the 2010s as he pursued other ventures, but he released a more introspective, experimental full-length titled The Everything (listen here) in 2011, then returned to his earlier disco-infused sound with 2018's Fear City (listen here).
Originally from South Carolina, Forrest was a photographer and writer before he began making computer-based music. Involved with the experimental music scene, he decided to go by the moniker Donna Summer for the purpose of "subjecting people to a fake issue of diversity." He began releasing CD-R albums such as 2001's Belligerent Super-Vision on his own Cock Rock Disco imprint, quickly establishing his signature sound consisting of pilfered samples from artists ranging from Public Enemy to Pat Benatar, all doused in noise and frantic breakbeats. In 2002, he released To All Methods Which Calculate Power on the Japanese label Omeko, as well as a 7" single, "Popxplosion," on Broklyn Beats. He also began hosting a radio program on Jersey City free-form station WFMU titled Advanced D&D with Donna Summer. The weekly program ran until 2005, and featured live performances, DJ sets, and interviews with artists like Duran Duran Duran, DJ /rupture, and a then-unknown Girl Talk; most of the music Forrest played on the show was unreleased material by independent artists. In 2003, Donna Summer released a split LP with Japanese breakcore artist OVe-NaXx, an album called Death After Life which was constructed entirely from Iron Maiden samples, and a full-length titled This Needs to Be Your Style on Irritant Records.
In 2004, Forrest began releasing music on Mouse on Mars' Sonig label. The Irregular EP was credited to Donna Summer, but The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash was issued under the producer's real name. The album was very well received by the press, particularly Pitchfork, who named it a Best New Music release. An experimental EP titled Lady Fantasy appeared in 2005, followed by the aptly named full-length Shamelessly Exciting. During the same year, Forrest's Cock Rock Disco label began releasing material by other artists, including Doormouse and Terminal 11. By this point, he had relocated to Berlin, where he co-founded a breakcore festival called Wasted; a compilation of the same name was released during the year.
Following a few scattered split releases, DJ mixes, and remixes for artists such as Foetus and End, Forrest's next album was 2008's Panther Tracks, this time credited to DJ Donna Summer. With influences ranging from the early-'90s rave scene to late-2000s styles such as jumpstyle and Baltimore club, the album was Forrest's most aggressively danceable work. Around this time, Forrest and New York-based DJ Jubilee co-founded Nightshifters, a club-friendly label that released tracks and remixes by AC Slater, Jokers of the Scene, Dre Skull, and others. DJ Donna Summer's Raw appeared on Nightshifters in 2010, containing a remix by Night Slugs co-founder Bok Bok.
Forrest resumed making more experimental music under his given name with Utopia, an EP released as part of Deathbomb Arc's digital singles club in late 2010. This was followed by 2011 full-length The Everything (on the Staatsakt label), which was considerably less giddy than his previous albums, but still intricately constructed. After the album's release, he largely put music on hold in order to focus on raising his son, as well as ventures such as the curated television site Network Awesome. He continued producing music, however, and in 2018, after he had returned to New York City, he released Fear City, a full-length more in line with his exuberant mid-2000s sound.
Latest album: Fear City
You can buy it on Bandcamp, Listen on Spotify or just go to youtube.
Jason Forrest “Fear City”
Cock Rock Disco
Release date: Sept 7, 2018
Fear City may not be the album we want but it might be the album we need.
Infused with a jittery optimism, it is album interspersed with noise, aggression, and a tongue in cheek attitude that keeps the listener in on the joke. Fear City is a fun album that doesn’t pander, a joyride through a scattered musical universe that hasn’t been explored since his landmark album “The Unrelenting Songs Of The 1979 Post Disco Crash”.
The album begins with “Severe High”, a song completely devoid of subtly; a slap in the face to decorum. From there Fear City takes diverging approaches to explore our contemporary psychic schism. Rock infused stompers are mashed into breakcore anthems as “Chase” and “Forever Psyche” immolate themselves as a parody of rock and roll purification. Similarly “Biker Movies” lashes out with Gabber fragments of sliced antagonism. Then, on a parallel hardcore track, “New Age Asshole” and “Real HxCx” take a darker path into an arhythmic moshpit of emotional release. Forrest returns to his Plunderphonic roots on Fear City as the album is littered with nearly recognizable fragments that escape your ability to place them. “Beating Up Giants” and “Chase” are familiar, more melodic, and steeped in hip-hop and punk but embody neither. Forrest again skates the line between original composition and simulacrum.
Another surprise on this album is Forrest’s return to Disco. A folksy guitar riff anchors “Demon Sun Ram”, a down-home funk track that might feel at home in a K-Tel compilation were it not for the near constant churn of weirdness happening at the periphery. Forrest questions originality and authenticity in “Subdivision”. Built on samples from 45 French filter-house songs, Forrest micro-edits them into a stomping dancefloor track that liberates the body, while slyly referencing our culture’s need to consume and recycle. Likewise, the amazing video by Markus X Fielder displays a future world of multi-sexual celebrants performing a choreographed routine that only digital bodies could empower.
All music guide on Jason Forrest’s “Unrelenting Songs…”
“a Day-Glo burst of wacked-out samples, clattering percussion, sun-kissed melodies, and general electronic insanity. Unless you are the sourest of electronica purists, you can't help but be knocked out by the sheer amount of wit, skill, and joy on display here.”
Pitchfork on “The Everything”
“Jason Forrest's mid-decade breakthrough was a coup when it came to the sampling arts.… these albums were singularly deranged acts of joyful violence against musical familiarity. You like having your music-nerd buttons pushed by recognizable snippets of canonical rock and pop favorites? Well, here they are crumbling to scraps, rattling around like superballs in a laundromat tumble dryer or burning like overheated film stock. Whether they were specific moments of instantly identifiable songs or a more generalist interpretation of certain genres, the way these loops were fed through Forrest's unpredictable yet danceable breakcore rhythms was invigoratingly grotesque.”
Review: Jason Forrest, Fear City by Holly Dicker
One of breakcore's leading artists draws inspiration from a crumbling New York City.
In the 1970s, New York City was grimy, decaying, plagued with rampant crime and on the brink of bankruptcy. Life was precarious and riddled with paranoia. For a few days in June, 1975, tourists were even warned to stay away by policemen handing out scaremongering pamphlets titled "Welcome To Fear City: A Survival Guide For Visitors To The City Of New York." There was a crude image of the grim reaper leering on the front, and a set of guidelines inside for keeping safe. The "Fear City" pamphlet may have overstated the situation, but there was a ring of truth to it.
In a way, Jason Forrest's latest album, Fear City, ferries us back to that New York via the late '60s and '70s source material—samples of funk, classic rock and psychedelic rock—that features prominently on about half of the LP. The other half quivers with the dark anxieties and tensions of today. Forrest, a New York-based musician and DJ, has made a name for himself as a "weird prog-rock" musician. In truth, no genre-based descriptors have ever contained him. His label, Cock Rock Disco, is a pretty glaring statement about the kinds of music he's made since the early '00s, under his own name and his ravier alias, DJ Donna Summer, but classic rock and disco are just a fraction of the myriad styles he has plundered over the years.
Fear City exemplifies Forrest's multilayered and multi-referential approach to complex songwriting. He wants you to query his music, to seek out its many nuances. You could sit with the LP for months or years trying to unpack and learn its secrets. But it's also instantly gratifying. Forrest is a skilled and entertaining sampler, which often translates into breakcore's most euphoric music. "Breakcore has always been an expression of joy," Forrest has said, "and I think you can hear that in the music." Take "Subdivsion." Its frenetic, exuberant disco-house lead was pieced together from a multitude of micro-samples from the Daft Punk labels Crydamoure and Roulé. The accompanying video brings out its colourful silliness.
However, Fear City excels in the darker, harder moments, which hint at a rarely seen sombre side. "New Age Asshole" is a cataclysmic mix of explosions, arcade gun fire and shells dropping to the floor amid angsty rave stabs and staccato glitches. Yes, it is cartoonishly melodramatic, but leaves an impression nevertheless, not unlike the Fear City pamphlet. "Real HcCx" is bombastic, cranky breakcore at its best, while "Uncertainty," among the LP's finest tracks, is a romp of mercurial beats and hypercolour blasts of melody that's noisy and carnivalesque in a quintessentially Forrest way.
Fear City isn't Forrest's most avant-garde album (that would be The Unrelenting Songs Of The 1979 Post Disco Crash) or his most refined (The Everything), but it is a lot of fun. Forrest makes serious music, but he doesn't take himself too seriously. Behind the jester facade is a highly skilled and knowledgeable musician with a passion for all things kitsch, outlandish and obscure. (Just listen to his Advanced D & D radio shows on WFMU.) As mainstream dance music increasingly becomes a monoculture, we need more inspiring risk-takers like Forrest and weirdo outliers like Cock Rock Disco. We need more breakcore, too—club music that isn't afraid to kick against the rules.