East Forest

East Forest is featured on the NPR Tiny Desk Top Contest page as a finalist from over 5000 video entries. - NPR Music

The sleeper-hit and best hidden gem at SXSW whether for classical/ambient fans or not, is far and above East Forest. Bon Iver fans take notice – Trevor Oswalt under the moniker as East Forest, is the next coming of the folk-field recording-atmospheric wave.

His emotive music experimentation of instruments is in a league of its own and that’s saying a lot given the abundance of such acts at this year’s SXSW.

East Forest’s sound is a mixture of nostalgia, tranquility, and heart beats all in one. His minimalist, repetitious style is memorable and invigorating with every listen.

Of all acts to catch at SXSW 2014, East Forest’s sets will be the ones you’ll know the least about but will be the ones you’ll remember the most long after the convoluted barrage of noise at SXSW. East Forest – The.One.To.Watch.

- See more at: http://www.altoriot.com/classicalambient-artists-to-watch-at-sxsw-2014/#sthash.HjwjCPTA.dpuf - Altoriot

East Forest, the ambient dreampop project from Trevor Oswalt, is preparing to release its seventh album, "Orbits," on Nov. 11. HuffPost Entertainment is excited to premiere the album's second single, "Hold On, Again," and its accompanying video.

Opening with reverberating piano chords, organic samples of moving water and tenuous falsettos, the track gradually builds into a magnificent climax led by stuttering synths and light percussion.

"'Hold On, Again' is a track that shouldn't even exist," Oswalt told The Huffington Post. "When I was recovering from a second near career-ending bike accident I was in my Portland studio one rainy afternoon. 'Hold On, Again' was improvised in one sitting, and it was fortunately recorded for a podcast of live work which was later released on a lark. The song gained a lot of popularity and eventually prompted me to revisit the work in the studio and further flesh it out. It became a sort of simple siren song of hope that translates to our busy daily lives. It sings to the part of us that knows a more beautiful world is possible even if we cannot visualize the steps to get there. The video for the song, directed by my friend Travis Blue, with visual effects by David Lobser, takes the music into a more stylized visual realm with a bleak industrial landscape exploding into a another possible reality."

Watch the video above and forget about all those silly things that are stressing you out right now. - Huffington Post

(listen to audio on site for full comments)

The music of Brooklyn artist East Forest is difficult to classify. With such diverse sound effects and samples as frogs croaking, children playing, side walk preachers preaching, and a New York subway door closing, The Education of the Individual Soul is tied to both nature and to everyday urban life, giving it the qualities of a sort of ethereal and mystical modern-day fairytale. Trevor Oswalt, the driving force behind East Forest, refers to his music as "ambient-electro-acoustic-post-rock," or "Shaman-rock" for short.

It was intentional on Oswalt's part not to include any sung lyrics on his album. Instead, he includes samples of original field recordings, looped over layers and layers of ambient sound and gentle instrumentation. On the opening and concluding tracks, for instance, Oswalt includes sound clips of a man named Court Johnson of Santa Barbara, CA who holds impromptu late night court sessions. To Oswalt, vocals would have detracted from the album's organic quality. "I like how little performance there is in a person chatting at a table or just in a bird song and how it can also contain such depth, honest, and real soul," he says.

Oswalt has chosen to make The Education of the Individual Soul available as a free download on the East Forest home page. It is his hope that his music will "promote introspection and personal growth" and "put a few cracks in the hypnotic spell of our modern life." - NPR

In this day and age, there is an abundance of music to choose from, in literally any genre, for music fans. In my experience, this has been a blessing and a curse at the same time -- finding new artists to truly connect to is an indescribable feeling, but one that has ceased to be special as it used to be by the sheer fact that there is so much wonderful music to explore. However, once in a while, an artist comes by who makes a lasting impression because their music simply blows you away. And that's exactly what happened when I first heard East Forest's music: I felt the same overwhelming feeling that few similar artists, such as Balmorhea and The Album Leaf, made me feel years ago. And I'm hoping that perhaps the song "Limitation" that we are premiering today, will touch other listeners the same way. Head over to the replies to take a listen to this gorgeous track, and if you enjoy what you hear, check out their incredible album The Education of the Individual Soul here. - Absolutepunk

A revelatory excursion in sound, Orbits serves as the auditory equivalent of a sonic journey through the endless beauties and intricacies Mother Nature has to offer. Fans of The Album Leaf, Ólafur Arnalds, and The American Dollar will succumb to Oswalt’s elegant ambience, subtle electronic beats, delicate vocals and all-encompassing, soothing aura. Aided by gorgeous string arrangements and layers of tranquil textures, every track carries an impressive posture all its own, but to absorb Orbits in its entirety is an experience that will both enlighten and relax the listener. - Under The Gun Review

As much as we like getting destroyed by radical dance music and sweet drops, we do need to recharge every once in awhile. In steps East Forest, a project driven by Trevor Oswalt since 2008. He is a traveled man, rambling through the majestic mountains to barren and distant deserts. As a result, the very environment he travels through affects the style of his work.

Most of his tunes are quite organic with hints of dream pop. He makes tracks that unifies the natural landscapes and the man-made soundscapes, which results in a very smooth yet intriguing approach to music. Today at EARMILK, we give you an early listen to "Carry Water", a song off of their upcoming album Orbits.

The song starts off with an acoustic piano with ambient noises subtly laced into the background. The ambiance of the song is what gives us this clean and crisp feeling, like a fresh water spring on the side of a mountain. There's a good mix of distortion and acoustic qualities that seemingly butt heads with each other, but in the end they find unison and harmony.

Find yours below. - EarMilk

To describe Trevor Oswalt, or East Forest, as innovative is putting it lightly. He aims to capture the essence of the outside world in his music by using different field recordings to do so. He's slept in the Sahara desert, been chased by bears, hung out in the Amazon for a bit and climbed some of the world's tallest mountains alongside his trusty recorder while he does so to capture the sounds of those different landscapes. The sound ends up being reminiscent of Sigur Ros, Olafur Arnalds, or Explosions in the Sky, and it's absolutely stunning. We're pleased to bring you his new video for 'Dive In' today, which he recorded and improvised live in front of a meditative audience in New York. The gorgeous video was filmed on the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California, and its ethereal atmosphere fits the track perfectly. - The405

Gentle, uplifting, and unerringly gorgeous, the music of East Forest is unobtrusive and rapturous, intimate and expansive.

East Forest is Trevor Oswalt, a man of many arts and a world traveler in love with the serenity of nature. He strives to unite music and the technology we use to craft it with nature and all its most serene elements. He calls the result “musical technology” - “modern scientific sound healing knowledge with the organic field recordings of people and places he encounters along the way.”

I call it lovely, with sounds that seem filtered and distilled until all that remains is a core of tranquility. The vocals, where present, are very Sigur Rós in that they aren’t actual words, and in that they are merely one piece of a transporting whole. There is voice and meaning here, but its spoken through a chorus made up of those vocal intonations, minimal vintage keys, and field recordings (as well as, in “Vyana,” a tasteful harmonica).

The new East Forest release is the EP Prana. It is 47 minutes of cleansing sound that, while divided into five tracks, functions as a whole piece. It’s streaming on Bandcamp with release slated for April.

East Forest’s video for “10 Laws” is also being featured by SXSW. It is the first track off his 2008 album The Education of the Individual Soul. - Nothing Sounds Better

Heading to SXSW? Be ready for a music awakening.
East Forest will be a featured artist this year at SXSW. You can catch the band live at The Hideout on Wednesday, March 12 at 8:00 PM !
Don’t know who East Forest are? Here’s some info:
East Forest’s Trevor Oswalt weaves ethereal soundscapes from his vintage keys, intimate vocals, and original field recordings. His sonic architecture reflects motifs of nature and the inner spiritual landscape juxtaposed with the realities and possibilities of modern society. The emotive music experiments with elements of pop and contemporary themes while leading the listener on a sensual ambient journey.
If you’ve listened to Sigur-Ros or Bon Iver then you’ll enjoy East Forest. Trust us when we say that their music will make any gloomy day brighter and you will find inner peace.
Don’t believe us, listen to a couple of their tracks, after the jump! - Entertainment Rocks

For a writer in the business of describing an artist’s sound, East Forest presents a particular challenge. A mix of organic and electric instrumentation blend with found sounds and the occasional vocal throughout the experimental artist’s surprisingly expansive catalog. Shifting from blissful ambience to uplifting meditations on pop melodies, East Forest accomplishes emotional resonance unlike anything else I’ve heard so far on the SXSW roster. While East Forest’s earlier material, notably 2008’s debut The Education of the Individual Soul, mainly lived in the ethereal, 2012’s Love Bomb takes some interesting detours that prove East Forest’s experimentation doesn’t just live in concept, but is rather an evolving force that is truly aiming to break new ground. While it’s hard to know if East Forest’s intention to connect music and nature will completely come across in a sweaty Austin bar one SXSW afternoon, but it is certainly worth a shot to hear something that lives in a place well beyond the ordinary. - O.E.B.

Ostensibly, modern lyrical music is an emotional outlet for the creator. The writer hopes listeners will be empathetic with the messages and ideas transmitted. Of course, the stimulus behind the creation of the music will vary; a cursory listen to Top 40 will show that today, most popular songs are about a whole host of superficial inspirations.

I’m referencing Top 40 radio above, but on a deeper level, all lyrical music has the same ultimate goal: to get the listener to, on a fundamental level, pick up what they’re putting down.

But what happens when the interpretation of the music is much more open-ended? When the creator doesn’t force the listener to lyrically assign a meaning, the piece can ostensibly be about anything to anyone. Therein lies the beauty of modern instrumental music.

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to Portland-based East Forest and its creator Trevor Oswalt through a burned CD handed to me late one night. As I drove home, I found myself exactly where I needed to be. East Forest does not command that one follows, it doesn't cultivate direction for the listener; rather, the music seems to travel to predictable yet somehow surprising places.

Robin Hilton from NPR calls it “blissful” and that might just be the most apt description of the music. More technically, East Forest describes itself as “a unique electro-acoustic musical project that combines melodic-ambient soundscapes, ethereal vocals and 100 percent original field recordings to create a genre-bending visionary listening experience.”

East Forest is able to maintain both a sonic familiarity that allows easy access to the listener yet holds a secret in its back pocket. The beauty in the music is in finding out what that secret is. To me, it lies somewhere between the oft indistinguishable vocals and the presence of ingeniously fulfilling field recordings. Both of these create a template for the listener to devise their own path tied to Oswalt’s inspiration yet free of lyrical interference.

Before playing this summer at the four Wanderlust music festivals where he will share the stage with Moby, Random Rab and Sarah Neufeld, Oswalt will perform in Omaha on Saturday night at the beautiful OM Center on 1216 Howard St. in the Old Market. The OM Center is a beautiful and inspiring place to witness live performances. - Hear Nebraska

Divinely beautiful and totally blessed, the latest release from East Forest is perhaps one of the most incredibly gentle albums I have listened to for some time.

This may be because Prana was recorded and created at a sound healing session during winter solstice (Northern hemisphere) that the music is imbibed with a deep sense of tranquillity - or if you would rather, a deep sense of healing: or it may simply be that the music was sent by the divine ones to reach out to as many as possible through the medium of modern technology, bringing healing and succour to those in need.

Subtly the sounds wind themselves around you, gently letting you release the tensions that hold you. So subtly in fact, you have no idea what is going on until you notice a gentle sense of relaxation has pervaded the fug encompassing you.

This collection of sounds involves more than relaxation and meditation vibrational levels, it holds the essence of healing: Inspired by the divine ones they are reaching out to heal and to hold, refresh and renew through the medium of East Forest.

East Forest is known for being able to create a “visionary, meditative, musical journey”, also one of healing and respite. In Prana, East Forest has succeeded to the ultimate with music directly from the Angels. - Blue Wolf Reviews

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Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/eastforestmusic
Soundcloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/eastforest
Tour Dates: http://m.bandsintown.com/EastForest - Various