Dagger Paths (Extended Version) [Remastered]

The musical recipe that UK producer Matthew Barnes uses in his one-man project Forest Swords is simple enough-- pick some sparse rhythms and sounds, loop them at a pace both languid and insistent, and fold in texture and volume as each piece slowly gathers momentum. But judging by the Dagger Paths EP, released by Olde English Spelling Bee earlier this year, the results are richer than you might expect. Through dense, mesmerizing atmospheres, which conjure faded memories and dream states, Barnes manages to evoke techno, dub, drone, and even hip-hop and R&B.

In fact, when I wrote about the EP back in June, I had a little trouble seeing Barnes' work outside of the fog of buzzy micro-genres like chillwave and witch house. His music's ghostly aura connects to those and other leftfield trends, but really, Barnes has pretty much transcended them all. The more I've listened, the more I've found his hypnotic concoctions to be in a category of their own. Now that UK label No Pain in Pop has re-released Dagger Paths, adding two tracks from a recent 7" and a CD-R with an impressive array of bonus material, the singularity is so clear it's almost blinding.

Most of that bright light comes from the surprisingly integral role of guitar. At first, these songs sound like a slow, sleepy weave of disparate elements-- dubby bass, sparse percussion, distant voices, blurry samples. But eventually, a bold guitar figure crafts a melody that sticks in your head rather than drifting away with all the echo and atmosphere. Barnes' music can rightly be called murky and dream-like, but it's deceptively so. Dagger Paths is much more active and sharp than such descriptions might imply.

The result is that, the further you delve these songs, the catchier each becomes. A few are immediately engaging, like the swinging "Miarches" and hip-hop-in-slo-mo "The Light" [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| . But other tracks prove just as memorable once they have some time to burrow into your brain. On "Glory Gongs", winding guitar chimes return whenever the track threatens to fall apart. And even the reverb-heavy, negative-space cover of Aaliyah's "If Your Girl Only Knew" retains the hook of the original. That trend persists as Barnes shifts his sound on two newer tracks-- the sparse, reggae-inflected "Rattling Cage", and "Hjurt", which wraps guitar in bombed-out drums and distant cries.

No Pain in Pop's bonus CD-R starts with six early Forest Swords tracks, all of which show Barnes' methods to have been pretty well intact from the start (a few are so heavy on fuzzed-out guitar explorations that Forest Swords could be mistaken for an improv rock combo). Also added are remixes of Dagger Paths cuts by other artists, and a 20-minute mix in which Barnes inventively reworks These New Puritans, Burial/Four Tet, and Wild Beasts. Clearly the guy has wide ideas about sound and what it can do, but what impresses most about Dagger Paths is its focus. All the elements and styles that Barnes collects like a magnet quickly align toward one unmistakable musical vision.